Math Horizons

ISSN: 1072-4117 (Print) 1947-6213 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/umho20

Searching for Categories: A Conversation with

Eugenia Cheng

Lauren Heller, Karen Lange & Bridget Schreiner

To cite this article: Lauren Heller, Karen Lange & Bridget Schreiner (2018) Searching
for Categories: A Conversation with Eugenia Cheng, Math Horizons, 25:3, 22-24, DOI:
10.1080/10724117.2018.1424462

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10724117.2018.1424462

Published online: 25 Jan 2018.

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Searching for Categories
A Conversation with Eugenia Cheng
Lauren Heller, Karen Lange,
and Bridget Schreiner

E
then maybe you ask,
ugenia Cheng is a mathematician, concert
“Isn’t there something
pianist, and passionate teacher who is dedi-
similar going on?”
cated to sharing the joys of mathematics
That’s what category
with the public.
theory says—that
Her first popular mathematics book,
there are similarities
How to Bake π (Basic Books, 2015), explains the big
between different
ideas of her research specialty—category theory—
parts of math, and
through mouthwatering analogies, and her second
that if we make them
book, Beyond Infinity (Basic Books, 2017), explores
into a theory in their
the mind-bending concept of infinity. Cheng has
own right, then we
appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and
get to see connections
some of her YouTube videos, such as “How to Cut a
between them. Galois
Bagel,” may have crossed your Facebook feed. theory is a good
After earning her PhD in mathematics from the example, because
University of Cambridge and completing two post- RoundTurnerPhotography.com
the whole point of it
doctoral positions, she settled into a permanent Eugenia Cheng.
was to make a really
position at the University of Sheffield. However, unexpected connection between roots of equations and
Cheng felt unfulfilled in the position and wanted a piece of algebra.
to spend more time working to “rid the world of Category theory is a bit like a unification theory of
math-phobia.” She is now the scientist in residence at mathematics. Rather than just charging ahead and
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. saying, “Let’s solve new problems! Let’s prove new the-
We sat down with Cheng to discuss category theo- orems!” it’s more about making connections between
ry, where mathematics sits on the science-humanities things, because then you can share resources, build
spectrum, and finding one’s own path in the world. bridges between subjects, and borrow the insight of
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. one subject to use in another.
Math Horizons: In your first Often it starts in one direction and comes back the
book, you take on the goal of other way, like in algebraic topology, where it start-
ed with topology making a bridge to algebra—with
explaining category theory to
topology borrowing things from algebra. But then we
anyone. How do you explain
discovered that there are ways in which algebra can
category theory to someone
use topology to find new insights.
with a bit more mathematics
Anywhere there are links between different fields
background?
that seem unrelated, category theory is often a good
Eugenia Cheng: If you ever
framework for expressing those links and discovering
feel like you are doing the
more links.
same thing in different sub-
jects, like you’re taking prod- MH: Should someone learn Galois theory, algebraic
ucts of something—whether Eugenia Cheng's topology, or something else that links two branches of
vector spaces or topological book How to Bake π math before trying to learn category theory?
spaces or groups or rings— (2015). EC: I don’t believe in “should” things—and certainly
22 February 2018 : : Math Horizons : : www.maa.org/mathhorizons
not prescriptive orders in which to learn
mathematics. It depends on how you
think. Many mathematicians believe in
the “examples first” method. But I don’t
understand things by examples; I un-
derstand things by theory, and if you’re
that kind of person, then no, you don’t
need to see all those examples.
I have been teaching category theory
to art students who don’t remember
any mathematics. It turns out that
there are plenty of examples that aren’t Cheng found a way to balance math, music, and other people.
mathematical but that come from life and the world
around us—or that come from very basic mathemat-
ics. In these cases, category theory isn’t going to yield
groundbreaking new pieces of research, but it does
illuminate the situation. So, category theory has very
few technical prerequisites.
Having said that, it depends what motivates you.
Some people are motivated only by trying to solve
particular problems. In that case, it will be much
better to have seen the other branches of mathemat-
ics first, because that’s where the insight and the
structures come from. Some pieces of category theory
are strongly motivated by the examples that they’re
trying to illuminate.
For example, model categories are so strongly mo-
tivated by an area of topology called homotopy the-
ory that if you don’t already know homotopy theory,
then it will be completely baffling. So it depends on
what kind of person you are and which bit of catego-
ry theory you are looking at.
MH: As a mathematician and musician, how do
you see mathematics relating to the sciences and
humanities?
EC: That’s an interesting question. I’m officially
the scientist in residence at the School of the Art
Institute, but it’s the first time in my life that I’ve
been considered a scientist by an institution. I’ve
always felt more like an arts person in terms of
behavior: I sit around and think, I don’t need to be
anywhere in particular, I don’t need any materials,
and I read and make things up.
In the end, I think that these classifications are
highly spurious, and they’re really for the purposes
of bureaucracy more than anything else. It depends
what the definitions are, but I think that different
disciplines are defined by the methods they use to
access truth. Mathematics accesses truth using logic,
www.maa.org/mathhorizons : : Math Horizons : : February 2018 23
Paul Crisanti/PhotoGetGo
science accesses truth using evidence, and art access-
es truth using expression and communication. So in
that sense we’re all different from each other, but
as long as we are trying to access truth, we are all
doing something valuable.
MH: How did you decide to specialize in mathematics?
EC: I found this amazing journal entry from when I
was 14, where I declared that the big conundrum of
my life, I was pretty sure, was going to be balancing
out the three things I loved the most, which were
math, music, and other people. And that has turned
out to be the case!
I considered becoming a professional musician for
about 10 minutes, and I thought it would be much
better to earn money doing math somehow and carry
on with music, rather than try to earn money doing
music and carry on with math. I knew I wanted to
specialize in math because everything else seemed
unrigorous to me, and really frustrated me as a result.
Math was the only area where I could go all the
way back to first principles and satisfy all my “why”
questions.
MH: You left a tenured position at the University of
Sheffield to become a public mathematician. How did
you know that you wanted to take that path?
EC: It was always something that was in my mind.
But I decided I couldn’t quit until I had tenure. I
didn’t want anyone to be able to say that I couldn’t
do it because I was a woman.
When I went back to the UK, I wanted to contribute
to the education system there, because I got so much
out of it myself. I didn’t become an academic just to
do research. I became an academic because I believe
that education is the greatest force of social justice
and that it can lift people. I was upset that this aspect
wasn’t valued as a central part of the university.
 I believe in finding the things
that you’re good at—and es-
pecially the combinations that
make you unique—and using
them in the best way to help
the world. It’s a category theory
thing actually, about universal
Beyond Infinity
properties, where you might not
came out in 2017.
be universal in this category,
but then if you combine things, you might be.
I have no illusions that I’m the greatest mathe-
matician on earth, but maybe I can be the greatest
mathematician who does very abstract research and
is also able to talk to a wide audience of all levels,
including three-year-old children and adults who
think they hate math.
MH: What advice do you have for undergraduates
who are looking for their unique path in the world—
their “universal property”?
EC: I had a moment. I was trying to figure out why
I didn’t feel right. So I wrote a list of all the things
that I think I’m good at, and I wrote a list of all the
things that make me happy. I looked at these two
lists and checked off the ones that were being acti-
vated by my life and my job in Sheffield, and it
was very few. And so I thought, “Okay, I need to
construct a life that uses more of the things I think
I’m good at and that involves more of the things
that make me happy.”
I love many things about my life now, and the
moral is, it was worth going through a few years of
strange instability to find something that not only
do I love, but that I think is making a contribution
to the world and where I’m appreciated and paid. I
do tons of things, and I never know what’s going to
appear in my email next.
That’s what I say if anyone feels stuck or misera-
ble: “The greatest things that have happened to me,
I had no idea that they were about to happen one
second before they did.” n
Lauren Heller is a mathematics graduate student at
the University of California, Berkeley. Karen Lange
is an associate professor at Wellesley College. Bridget
Schreiner is a mathematics graduate student at the
University of Notre Dame. All three interviewers are
still trying to figure out their universal properties.
10.1080/10724117.2018.1424462
24 February 2018 : : Math Horizons : : www.maa.org/mathhorizons
What Is Category Theory?
When mathematicians look at examples of a
new kind of object, they often examine func-
tions that preserve structure. For instance, in
an abstract algebra course, we study groups
and functions between them—called homo-
morphisms. And in topology, we study topo-
logical spaces and continuous maps (functions)
between them.
Category theory generalizes this approach via
structures called categories. A category consists
of a class of objects and a collection of maps
(also known as morphisms) between the objects
that satisfy certain axioms.
The category Grp has groups as objects and
homomorphisms between groups as maps.
There are categories of sets (Set), topologi-
cal spaces (Top), as well as most other kinds
of structures. Instead of focusing on a single
category like Set, Grp, or Top, category theory
tries to find relationships between different
categories in order to illuminate patterns found
throughout mathematics.
Universal Properties—What Makes
an Object Special?
We say that a group G satisfies the initial
property if for every group H, there is a unique
homomorphism from G to H. It turns out that
only trivial groups—groups consisting solely of
an identity element—satisfy the initial property
in Grp.
The definition of initial property is anal-
ogous for any category C. It turns out that
any two objects in C that satisfy the initial
property must be the same—that is, they are
isomorphic. Thus, the objects that satisfy the
initial property can be defined by the prop-
erty. In other words, the property describes
something uniquely special about these
objects. In category theory, any property
with this unique description feature is called
a universal property. n