Talithia Williams - Power in Numbers

Williams presenting her popular TED talk, Own Your Bodys Data, at the 2017 Tableau Conference.

As an undergraduate student, I spent three summers working at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). At JPL I was assigned to a research team where Dr. Lonne Lane was the advisor. Lonne was ridiculously brilliant, and he insisted that I call him by his first name. Now being raised in the South, I was taught never to call adults by their first name. Some social title needed to come before his nameMr., Dr., Officer, Sir, Rev, Deaconas a sign of respect. But he wouldnt let me do it. In fact, everyone at JPL was on a first-name basis. He brought me into his research team and made me feel like I was an asset, as if my thoughts and opinions mattered. Here I was, this kid from Georgia, working side by side with rocket scientists. But despite the camaraderie, I still couldnt help but feel a bit out of place. That is, until I met Dr. Claudia Alexander.

Claudia was my mentor for those three summers. She was everything that I dreamed I could become. She was beautiful and smart, and had a PhD in space physics from the University of Michigan, and worked at NASA. I remember wanting to get beautiful blonde highlights just like hers. The better I got to know her, the more I became hooked on mathematics. You see, she represented the dream of what I could one day become. I didnt know it then, but during our summers together at NASA, she had planted a seed in me, and it was, thankfully, a lot more rewarding than blonde highlights!

I graduated from Spelman College as a math major with a minor in physics, before moving on to Howard University for a masters degree in math. At Rice University, where I received my PhD in statistics, I was not only the only female in my class, but also the only African American. I met my husband while at Ricehe was in the Computational and Applied Mathematics departmentand he approached me with a line like no other: I wish I was your derivative, because then I would be tangent to your curves. Yeah, who wouldnt pass that up? He had me at derivative.

A few years later, I landed a tenure-track position at Harvey Mudd College and have worked to make the dream of broadening participation in the mathematical sciences a reality, much like Mr. Dorman, Claudia Alexander, Lonne Lane, and my Spelman professors have done for me. And I hope Power in Numbers takes me one step closer to that dream.

As you read through the incredible stories of the women profiled in these pages, the one thread they all have in common is that at some point on their journeys, someone believed in them; someone made them think the impossible was perhaps not so impossible. It was extremely difficult to narrow down the list of women I selected for inclusion here, but what I offer is a sampling of female mathematicians throughout historyincluding modern mathematicianswho have shattered stereotypes, pursued their passions, and persisted even when things got tougheven when people told them they couldnt do it. Many were alone on their journey, but with every female who enters the field of math, it makes it easier and more achievable for the next one, and the one after that.