Today's guest is Holly Krieger.

A lot of number file viewers will know her from numerous popular videos on our YouTube channel,

especially ones about her beloved Mandelbrot set.

Holly's an American mathematician, but she's now working at the University of Cambridge in the UK,

and her path to mathematics, well, it's not as direct as you might expect.

I was born in Champagne, Illinois.

Champagne?

Yeah, spelled differently than the proper champagne.

How's it spelled?

C-H-A-M-P-A-I-G-N. Does that, do they have a special drink there that can only be made in that area? Yeah, but it's made in barns out of leftover corn. Sorry, no, it's a university town, so there is some town there, but it's pretty rural. And what were you like as like a little girl? Loud and

obnoxious. Is that what you're going to? Yeah, no, I think I was normal. I mean, there's this

phenomenon where the way you remember yourself has nothing to do with the way that other people

remember you. Right. And so when I was small, I mean, I thought of myself as like quite outgoing and,

you know, like to have fun. But in reality,

I think I was like a little nerd who kind of tagged along with adults when she wasn't wanted.

Would I have guessed you were going to become a mathematician?

Oh, I really, you've pinned me down by asking the question that way. I was back visiting 10 years

after I graduated high school for a band reunion.

So that's already partially answering your question.

Right.

And at the time, I think I had just gotten like my first post-PHD job, this like postdoc at MIT.

And I went there and I was really expecting everyone to be like shocked that in the end what I had done was go get a PhD in mathematics and like do this super nerdy academic mathematician thing. And then when I got there, everyone was like, oh yeah. Yeah, we could tell when you were in school that that was the kind of thing you would end up doing. And I had thought like, I would be, you know, a rock star or something.

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