There's this fantastic quote from the great science fiction author Octavia Butler, about the lack of black women science fiction authors who could have served as role models for her: "Frankly, it never occurred to me that I needed someone who looked like me to show me the way.  I was ignorant and arrogant and persistant and the writing left me no choice at all."  I might have written that.  When I was a mathematics student, I was so firmly convinced that I had what it took that it never occurred to me to care whether there were female role models around.  This week, it was announced that Karen Uhlenbeck, professor emerita of mathematics at UT Austin, was awarded this year's Abel prize.  The Abel prize is the most prestigious award there is for a senior mathematician (much closer to a Nobel prize for mathematics than the usually mentioned Fields medal), and Professor Uhlenbeck is the first woman to receive it.  Now, in that rarified stratosphere of Abel-prize recognized mathematical brilliance, there is a woman we can look up to.  Does it matter?


 I was a student at the turn of the last century, when the mathematics community, along with many other male-dominated professions, had noticed that the expected influx of women somehow never seemed to materialize, and was looking for more active ways to bend the curve.  In my experience, this meant mostly the appearance of "women in mathematics" groups, whose very existence I found vaguely offensive: how dare anyone tell me I needed extra support?  As a graduate student, I read a piece in a professional publication by a famous (white, male) mathematician, offering the advice to people in underrepresented groups that, when choosing a graduate program, they should find one that had faculty in their demographic, to serve as role models.  And again, my reaction was "How dare he?" How dare he suggest that I should have turned down a place at Stanford because there were no women on the faculty?  Like Ms. Butler, it never would have occurred to me to do such a thing, and for the record, I loved Stanford and will always be grateful for everything I got out of my time there.  First and foremost, a wonderful advisor who led me to beautiful mathematics.  

The thing is, I don't know what Ms. Butler said next after that fantastic quote.  But my career didn't end with being a  graduate student at a famous university; life went on.  I got exactly the kind of job I wanted: a tenure-track assistant professorship at the same institution where I had been an undergraduate, together with a prestigious fellowship that allowed me to focus on research.  At first, I was way too focused on proving the next theorem to notice or care about any forms of gender bias around me.  But little by little, I began to notice things.  The students who complained that they were too intimidated to ask me questions because it all seemed to easy for me (isn't the professor supposed to know the material well?).  The fact that I developed the habit of never stopping to breathe while making a point in a meeting, lest someone start talking over me.  The aggressive questions during and after some of my talks.  And I started to see why having peers or mentors who understood these experiences had some value.

I met Karen Uhlenbeck once.  It was at the program "Women and Mathematics" at the Institute for Advanced Study.  Every year, they run a two-week workshop on a current research topic for female students and postdocs, with four senior women giving a week's worth of lectures each.  In 2014 I was invited to be one of the lecturers.  I felt that I didn't need a support group because of my gender, but I did recognize that maybe it did matter to at least some young women, seeing people who looked like them at the front of the room, and maybe that could be me.  So I went  and it was wonderful.  And as much as I'd seen it as a vaguely altruistic gesture on my part, having the opportunity to meet and talk to the senior women organizers affected me in ways I didn't expect.  I remember in particular talking to Karen and to Dusa McDuff, another towering figure of current mathematics.  I never would have believed it, and my younger self would have been incensed at the very idea, but interacting with them propped up a little part of my self-image that I hadn't realized was sagging.

In March 2017, the Notices of the American Mathematical Society featured on its cover a head shot of Andrew Wiles, who was awarded the Abel prize in 2016.  Professor Wiles proved Fermat's last theorem, a conjecture that had stood for over 350 years; such an achievement certainly merits all the awards we can throw at it.  But I bet I wasn't the only woman who noticed that that issue of the Notices had a large picture of a famous male mathematician, that the other two names on the front cover belonged to men, and that there was a tiny, colorful banner declaring that it was Women's History Month.  Next time, it will be Karen Uhlenbeck on the cover and that little banner about Women's History Month won't feel like a sad little bone thrown to the people who don't really matter.  It will feel like a celebration of something real.  Yes, it matters.