Staying Connected with Math after Academia

Anudha Mittal

By Anudha Mittal

Evenings after work I watch math lectures: Ravi Vakil, Terrance Tao, Manjul Bhargava, Akshay Venkatesh, Sir Michael Atiyah. A welcome break from my predictable day job and my more-mundane social life, the videos stimulate my mind and get me thinking of exciting new ideas. I try to raise some interesting conversations about mathematics at work with my colleagues. Managers, however, keep projects on pace by maintaining a constant state of immediacy. They allow no time for such digressions. I try to talk about it with my friends, too, in social settings; the response is some variation of ‘oh, that’s cool.’

Where is there an opportunity for a more-involved conversation, an opportunity for me to show my joy in mathematics?

I am 34, and I have various skills in computer science and materials science which allow me to find work in most metropolitan locations or in suburbia. The geographical freedom and being part of an industry that has a higher turn-around than academia has allowed me to take months off at a time to explore entrepreneurial work and think about societal impacts. In short, I don’t want to be a student again; it places too many restrictions on life. Yet, I long for the kinds of conversations about mathematics that students have: rigorous and full of wonder. I think both of these qualities can be incorporated in work culture by maintaining a connection with academia, and they would add value at work.

I tried a meet-up group where people with similar interest in the abstract discussed problems from abstract algebra and real analysis. It didn’t gel. Perhaps because I was the only female, it was during the pandemic, I never met any of the people, and we were only able to slowly write proofs in some software with math symbols. Or perhaps I didn’t try hard enough.

I have also experienced a mental shift from student life, when all of life’s possibilities were going to be true in time, and, for the moment, I could focus on a homework problem. Now solving a problem feels incomplete without thinking about the solution’s applications in materials science or software or its philosophical value in our life.

I asked myself what value mathematics still brings to my everyday life, and there is one concrete example. A mathematics commentary I read once made me think about ‘what is truth.’ Is something true if it changes with time? Is something true if it changes based on location and culture? Is truth only contextual or can it be more universal? These questions mattered to me in moments when I wanted to act on what’s true, rather than based on a cultural norm, and also when my truth was in conflict with someone else’s truth. I wanted to understand the nature of truth. So I looked at truth through the lenses of different fields, and mathematics was one of them.

The commentary was by Edward Frenkel. The Pythagorean Theorem, he said, is a truth constant in time. While many more mathematical truths will be discovered, the Pythagorean Theorem will remain true. In the sciences, our grasp of the truth evolves. This comment struck particularly hard because I had already been thinking about my interest in discovering the truth about the physical nature of our existence. I had taken extra physics courses in college when I could. I am mostly now surrounded by computer scientists or software engineers. They build infrastructure for communication, computation, and storage of data. The conversations are mostly about software technologies. The truth evolves at a very rapid pace. In art, great pieces of cinema and literature argue for opposing viewpoints. While art also seeks to uncover truth, the dynamic is different. In observing emotions, the relationship between time and truth is cyclic or oscillatory. In one moment it is true that I want someone, in another I don’t.

I read a few pages of Mathematics for Human Flourishing by Francis Su while browsing at a bookstore, and I decided to learn more about the author. That’s when I learned about the Mathematical Association of America. Although academic societies are generally well known, we often only know about the ones close to our own field.

Not everyone can find a career in academia, and not everyone wants to. There really is something exciting about being in an industry where I can dream and build new impactful technologies. I also like being surrounded by peers in my age group and meeting people with different professional backgrounds. However, I also long to connect with academics, but I’m not sure what I can offer them in the conversation. Can we find a meaningful way for individuals in industry to be part of a math community? Can a vision shared by both industry and academics be developed?

Anudha Mittal minored in mathematics at the University of Massachusetts and earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. Now she lives in Santa Clara, CA and works on various projects in materials science and software. Her other interests include hatha yoga, watercolor painting, and hiking. Her email is anudham@gmail.com.