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The 92-Year-Old Mathematician and the Teenage Apprentice - Freedium

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Joan Birman thought her major discoveries were behind her. Then came an email from a young neighbor — a girl who knew little but wanted to learn.

It was a kind of note that Joan Birman had received many times: a plea from a high school student, asking for help learning mathematics. After enjoying freshman geometry class, the student wrote, she had recently read her first real mathematical proof. It made her think there might be something more to math than what she was learning in school. Perhaps Dr. Birman could show her what she was missing. Messages like this had arrived with such regularity during Dr. Birman’s career that she had come to suspect they were assigned by high school teachers. They kept arriving via email, though…

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