For the first time, Clara Grima (Seville, 1971) has let her mathematical mind rest. She has been so entertained during the journey that she has banished any purpose of operation or computation. This is how she will express it to the journalist Joana Bonet at the end of her meeting on rails, which constitutes a new chapter in the series of 12 interviews Women and Travelers of Renfe. It all started with a question: What calculations can be made sitting in a train car?
“The ones you want. In fact, since trains are so comfortable now, I take a lot of them. I work a lot on math on the train. The last book I have published talks about a story on an AVE from Madrid to Seville. I taught the man I shared a seat with how to multiply matrices. When he got off in Córdoba, he left very happy,” says the mathematician and scientific communicator. Because Clara Grima, between invention and discovery, has spent her entire life dedicated to this science.
“There are mathematics that are invented and others that are discovered. For example, everyone thinks that two parallel lines will never meet. But, then, a man arrives and says “I’m going to invent a geometry, a world or a space, as we say, where the lines do intersect.”
And a geometry is invented that is not real, you do not see it, it is fictitious, but then the universe comes and you find that it already knew that mathematics. That is to say, they are invented, but they were already there. On the other hand, in my latest research work, we have discovered a new geometric shape, present in epithelial cells, that was not known: the scutoid,” says the professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Seville and also winner of the Medal of Gold of the city of Seville 2021.
Clara Grima’s vocation is to bring mathematics closer to the youngest and do it in a playful way, as if it were a game. She is so passionate about her profession that she admits that, on some occasion, she has been deeply moved. “What if I’m romantic? Yes and very cheesy. That’s why I’m a mathematician [laughs]! In some classes, tears fall when I prove a theorem or solve a problem that I pose to my students,” she confesses. Despite the fact that kids, according to the PISA report, “choke” mathematics.
“Let’s see, they have some effort, but this “choking” happens for many reasons. The first is that children come to school and already hate mathematics. On the street there is talk about how difficult, how distressing they are.
Unfortunately, many teachers, not all but a large part, were kids who hated math. More than hating them, they were afraid of them. And then there is a fundamental factor and that is that, you can already be Pythagoras that, if you enter a class with 30 children, each one with his father and his mother and without means, you cannot do anything there. I think we don’t take it seriously, but it is a very serious problem for the country. We need more mathematics and mathematicians,” he claims.
Then comes one of the key questions of the interview: What is mathematics for? The answer is overwhelming: for everything. “The socioeconomic impact of mathematics is 10% of the GDP. What’s more, the most powerful tool there is right now to save humanity is mathematics. You can do impressive things in health with Artificial Intelligence,” he says.
For the better, algorithms will inexorably shape our lives. This is confirmed by Clara Grima, who gives an example. “With the autonomous car, accidents will decrease, since the vehicles do not take drugs, do not drink, do not get angry… They are machines designed by us,” she explains.
However, he points out that it is important not to forget who creates those algorithms that configure the machines of the future. “Lately, algorithms are very biased. If you look at who controls the technological world, you are going to find white, straight, Protestant, young men. But if we manage to do it in a different way… Furthermore, so many algorithms and so much automation of tasks are going to return us to philosophy again, because our ethics no longer work.”
And it is explained. “For the first time in the history of humanity, the autonomous car will mean something incredible: that an uncontrolled machine decides on human lives in moments and without supervision. Not only mathematics but science in general has power right now. With genetic editing, with CRISPR, with all the advances in physics… We have to sit down again to define an ethics that is global.”
Unfortunately, today, the presence of women in the world of mathematics continues to be a minority. “Women are moving away from them. Before, you studied because you wanted to be a teacher. But now people who start a career in mathematics want to work in technology. It is better paid and better socially recognized, and the work is more competitive,” she points out.
On the same topic, he clarifies: “It has been seen that when this profession loses the character of service to the community, the girls disappear. And this is because there is the message that they should be the ones who provide service to the community, while “The kids are the leaders and entrepreneurs.”
It is surprising that, in a very technologically advanced world, where mathematics has reached Twitter and social networks – at this point, Clara Grima speaks of the “mirage of the majority” –, where Artificial Intelligence is gaining more and more strength, depression still not understood. And the communicator knows a lot about that matter. “Now, there are many people who are taking the step of speaking out. I hid it and we have to keep in mind that it is a disease like any other, like a toothache, but more difficult to cure because it is in your head,” she clarifies.
Clara Grima recommends to Joana Bonet a theorem that can be applied in life. “There is that of Pythagoras, because without him we would not have houses, but to say one less known: the Four Color Theorem. I always recommend it to people who are getting married, so that, when organizing the banquet, they distribute it to their relatives, to the annoying ones, without spoiling too many of the wedding tables.”
It all ends with that question, in another tense, with which it all began: Have you done any calculations during the journey? “No, I got carried away by how much fun I was having with you,” celebrates mathematician Clara Grima.
