2021 Kingman Speaker Series Features Eugenia Cheng

Cheng to address art and logic

Eugenia Cheng (Photo by Eugenia Cheng)

Eugenia Cheng, PhD, will be the featured speaker for the second annual Robert and Lillis Kingman Speaker Series on Science & Society on Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021. Her presentation, intended for lay audiences, is titled “The Art of Logic in an Illogical World.” Her talk will be based on the same subject as her 2018 book, “The Art of Logic: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn’t.” A reception will begin at 6 p.m., and the lecture will take place at 7 p.m., with a book signing to follow. The event will be held at the Howard Performing Arts Center on the campus of Andrews University. The event can also be viewed online at andrews.edu/livestream.

Cheng is Scientist-in-Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an honorary Visiting Fellow of City, University of London. Previously, she was a senior lecturer of pure mathematics in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield, UK, and has also taught at the University of Cambridge, University of Chicago and University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. She obtained her doctoral degree in pure mathematics from the University of Cambridge and has the aim to rid the world of “math phobia.” In addition to being a public speaker and mathematician specializing in Category Theory, Cheng is an accomplished author, columnist, concert pianist and artist.

Cheng has written for the Everyday Math Column for the Wall Street Journal and has completed mathematical art commissions for Hotel EMC1, 6018 North, the Lubeznik Center, and the Cultural Center, Chicago. In 2013, she founded the Liederstube, an intimate oasis for art and song based in Chicago. Some of her popular books on mathematics include “How to Bake Pi” (2015), “Beyond Infinity” (2017), “x + y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender” (2020) and “Molly and the Mathematical Mysteries: Ten Interactive Adventures in Mathematical Wonderland” (2020). All of her work will be available for purchase after the lecture.

The Kingman family has a long history at Andrews University. Robert Kingman began teaching in the Department of Physics in 1971 and eventually went on to serve as chair of the department for more than 40 years by the time of his retirement. During this time, he implemented faculty home vespers, which have since become important social and spiritual gatherings. Kingman received his master’s and doctoral degrees in physics from the University of Arizona, Tucson. His dissertation is titled “On the spatial distribution of clusters and galaxies.”

The Robert and Lillis Kingman Speaker Series on Science & Society, which aims to bring significant speakers in science and mathematics onto campus, was established in 2019. The inaugural speaker was David Reitze, PhD, executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Laboratory and professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology.