Joy of Abstraction: An Exploration of Math, Category Theory, and Life

Dr Eugenia Cheng is a mathematician, educator, author, columnist, public speaker, pianist, composer, artist. She is Scientist In Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She won tenure in Pure Mathematics at the University of Sheffield, UK and is now Honorary Visiting Fellow at City, University of London. She has previously taught at the Universities of Cambridge, Chicago and Nice and holds a PhD in pure mathematics from the University of Cambridge. Alongside her research in Category Theory and undergraduate teaching her aim is to rid the world of “math phobia”. Her first popular math book, "How to Bake Pi", was published by Profile (UK) and Basic Books (US) in 2015 to widespread acclaim including from the New York Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, and she was interviewed around the world including on the BBC, NPR and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Eugenia was an early pioneer of math on YouTube and her videos have been viewed around 15 million times to date. Her next popular math book, "Beyond Infinity" was published in 2017 and was shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize 2017. Other popular math books include "The Art of Logic" (Profile/Basic 2018) and "X+Y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender" (Profile/Basic 2020). She also writes the Everyday Math column for the Wall Street Journal, and has completed mathematical art commissions for Hotel EMC2, 6018 North, the Lubeznik Center and the Cultural Center, Chicago. Eugenia is the founder of the Liederstube, an intimate oasis for art song based in Chicago, and has completed art song commissions for GRAMMY nominated soprano Laura Strickling, and the Lynx Amplify project. Eugenia has written two children's books: "Molly and the Mathematical Mystery" (Templar/Candlewick 20201) and "Bake Infinite Pie with X+Y" (Little Brown Young Readers, 2022) and an accessible but rigorous introduction to her research field "The Joy of Abstraction: An Exploration of Math, Category Theory, and Life" (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Her next book is "Is Math Real? How Simple Questions Lead us to Mathematics' Deepest Truths" (Profile/Basic), out in 2023.