STEM Heroes: Danica McKellar
After spending years playing Winnie Cooper in the hit television show The Wonder Years, Danica McKellar expected to major in film when she began classes at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Every day, though, she grew more and more frustrated as people continued to think of her as Winnie, rather than Danica. Then, one day in her math class, a fellow student tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me, aren’t you the girl…” She braced herself, expecting the question to end with, “from TV.” Instead, he continued, “…who got the highest score on the midterm?” At that moment, Danica’s dedication to the study of math was cemented.
During her senior year, Danica enrolled in a complex analysis class and found a mentor in her professor, Lincoln Chayes, who recruited her for a research project. Together with Chayes and fellow student Brandy Winn, they set out to prove a theorem to help demystify the difficult-to-predict temperature at which an iron bar magnet will cease to be magnetized. The resulting mathematical proof was informally named the Chayes-McKellar-Winn Theorem, and is formally known as Percolation and Gibbs State Multiplicity for Ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller Models in Two Dimensions. In 1998, Danica earned a Bachelor of Science in mathematics with highest honors.
Following her graduation, Danica returned to acting, appearing in popular television shows like The West Wing and How I Met Your Mother, and while acting was her first love, her enthusiasm for math only grew with time. Danica enrolled in graduate school and in 2005, she received her Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago. After this, she launched a personal website, where she gives advice to girls about embracing mathematics and fights against stereotypes that math isn’t glamorous.
She enjoyed writing for her site so much, that in 2007 she was inspired to publish a book titled Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail. Following the success of her teen-friendly book, she wrote a series of New York Times best-sellers including Kiss My Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who’s Boss, Hot X: Algebra Exposed!, and Girls Get Curves: Geometry Takes Shape. Danica has also published children’s picture books, to help foster interest in math early on. Her bedtime stories weave in counting concepts on each page, to connect children with real numbers in their world.
Danica combined math and acting when she took on the lead role in a production of “Proof,” a play by Pulitzer-winning playwright David Auburn, where she plays a young woman claiming to have solved a complicated math proof. She recalls thinking that, until taking that role, there had never been a time in her life when she knew a role was written for her.
However, we think her best role is when she’s playing herself. When she was invited in 2000 to testify in front of a Congressional subcommittee on drawing more women into science and math, she found herself nervous and questioning why she would be chosen to speak in front of Congress about math. In preparation for her testimony, she read through a 100-page report on the current state of women in STEM. She recalls the report’s inclusion of a study that stated, “by 8th grade, girls’ interest in mathematics and confidence in their mathematics abilities has eroded, even though they perform as well as boys in this subject.” It became clear to her that girls are smarter than they realize and took it upon herself to empower them with the confidence to pursue math. During her congressional testimony, she said she hoped to be a role model for future mathematicians, in particular, middle school girls. She confessed that her knees shook the whole time, but knew it was worth it if her work could change the way girls think about math.
Sources:
Kenneth Chang, “Between Series, an Actress Became a Superstar (in Math),” The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/science/between-series-an-actress-became-a-superstar-in-math.html.
Jim Clash, “A Beautiful Mind: ‘Wonder Years’ Star Danica McKellar Is a Bonafide Math Whiz,” Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2016/01/11/a-beautiful-mind-wonder-years-mckellar-winnie-cooper-bonafide-math-whiz/#417a4e5c4567.
Danica McKellar, “Danica at Congress,” Math Doesn’t Suck, http://www.mathdoesntsuck.com/downloadable/danica_at_congress.pdf.
Scott Simon, “Danica McKellar’s Mathematical Theorem,” NPR, https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=5201825.
Terrance Tao, “’Math Doesn’t Suck’, and the Chayes-McKellar-Winn theorem,” Terry Tao, https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2007/08/20/math-doesnt-suck-and-the-chayes-mckellar-winn-theorem/.
“Danica McKellar,” Biography, https://www.biography.com/people/danica-mckellar-20970757.
