Rachel A.O. Jenkins

More than 20 years ago, on my second day on the job, I told Uri Treisman that I’d never, uh, studied calculus. His response? “It’s not too late.” Before I started working here, I hadn’t understood that math is a language. The most precise language we have for capturing reality. Closest I’ve come to that exactitude is by obsessively reading Wallace Stevens. Valid, but insufficient.