A Number Chef’s Roots

Dr. Cheng’s upbringing in rural Sussex as one of two daughters led her readily to math love. Their mother, a statistician who had been considered the most brilliant math student at her Hong Kong high school, would keep her girls entertained at the beach for hours with books of logic puzzles.

And because their mother commuted each day to a London accounting firm while their father had a child psychiatry practice near home, the girls grew accustomed to the idea of a briefcase mother and a father who made dinner.

“I think Eugenia and I both benefited from the atypical setup,” said Alethea Cheng Fitzpatrick, Dr. Cheng’s older sister and now an architect in New York. “We didn’t go into adulthood with any preconceptions about gender roles or gender abilities.”

Later, during graduate school at Cambridge University and three postdoctoral fellowships in Europe and the United States, Dr. Cheng would often find herself in a tiny minority. “I’ve been to conferences where there were more cubicles in the women’s bathroom than there were women to use them,” she said.

Today, in the United States, less than 30 percent of graduate students and about 12 percent of tenured faculty members in math are women. Dr. Cheng is striving to change attitudes across the board. “I want to be a role model for men as well as women,” she said.

The custard is ready. The ideal becomes real. I finish the first bowl, and ask for more.

* Let x be me and y be my father. Today, y=3x. In 10 years, my father will be y+10 and twice my age, so y+10=2(x+10). Since 3x=y, we can get rid of the y in that equation, as 3x+10=2(x+10). And since 2(x+10) is the same as 2x+20, we can now say 3x+10=2x+20. Finally, subtract 2x from both sides of the equation and you get x+10=20. Therefore, x=10, and I am 10 years old.