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Susan D'Agostino

Contributing Writer

Latest Articles

Photo of Darden sitting on her couch and smiling
Q&A

The NASA Engineer Who’s a Mathematician at Heart

By Susan D'Agostino
January 19, 2021
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Christine Darden worked at NASA for 40 years, helping make supersonic planes quieter and forging a path for women to follow in her footsteps.

Q&A

To Boldly Go Where No Internet Protocol Has Gone Before

By Susan D'Agostino
October 21, 2020
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Vinton Cerf helped create the internet 40 years ago, and he’s still working to connect people around the world — and off it.

Photo of emperor penguins huddling together for warmth, with two sticking their heads out
Abstractions blog

Math of the Penguins

By Susan D'Agostino
August 17, 2020
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Emperor penguins display rigorously geometric spacing and mathematical efficiency when they huddle together for warmth, which may reveal secrets to their overall health.

Visualization of the distribution of prime numbers in the shape of colorful dots in a hexagonal pattern
Abstractions blog

Mathematicians Will Never Stop Proving the Prime Number Theorem

By Susan D'Agostino
July 22, 2020
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Why do mathematicians enjoy proving the same results in different ways?

Q&A

The Computer Scientist Who Can’t Stop Telling Stories

By Susan D'Agostino
April 16, 2020
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For pioneering computer scientist Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression.

Photo of Ronald Rivest sitting in his office
Q&A

Cryptography Pioneer Seeks Secure Elections the Low-Tech Way

By Susan D'Agostino
March 12, 2020
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Ronald Rivest helped come up with the RSA algorithm, which safeguards online commerce. Now he’s hoping to make democratic elections more trustworthy.

Photo of Scarlett Howard, a researcher at the University of Toulouse, working with honeybees
Q&A

Secrets of Math From the Bee Whisperer

By Susan D'Agostino
January 22, 2020
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As Scarlett Howard taught honeybees to do arithmetic, they showed her how fundamental numbers might be to all brains.

Q&A

The Architect of Modern Algorithms

By Susan D'Agostino
November 20, 2019
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Barbara Liskov pioneered the modern approach to writing code. She warns that the challenges facing computer science today can’t be overcome with good design alone.

About the author

Susan D’Agostino is the author of the general-interest math book, How To Free Your Inner Mathematician: Notes on Mathematics and Life (Oxford University Press, 2020). Her writing has been published in Quanta, The Atlantic, Scientific American, Discover, Undark, Nature, Financial Times, Slate, and Ms. She earned a PhD in Mathematics at Dartmouth College and is currently pursuing an MA in science writing at Johns Hopkins University. Follow her on Twitter @susan_dagostino.
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