In partnership with Chesterton House and The Veritas Forum, The Octet Collaborative is pleased to present Harvey Mudd mathematician Francis Su, in conversation with Mia Chung-Yee. Q&A to follow.

For many people, math is cold and lifeless, a bunch of rules to follow---a way to separate people rather than a way to bring them together. It’s no wonder that many have anxiety over their math experiences. But what if we could see how math is tied to our deepest human longings---for beauty, for justice, for love? Would we see it---and ourselves---differently? Join mathematician Francis Su in conversation with Mia Chung-Yee as they discuss the broader implications of his new book Mathematics for Human Flourishing, which he wrote in collaboration with his friend Christopher Jackson, an incarcerated man who reshaped Su's own views of what math is, who it's for, and why anyone should learn it.

Francis Su is the Benediktsson-Karwa Professor of Mathematics at Harvey Mudd College, and former president of the Mathematical Association of America.  He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, and in 2000, he was a visiting professor at Cornell. His research is in geometric combinatorics and applications to the social sciences. On a popular level, he writes about the dignity of human beings and the wonder of mathematical teaching. In 2013, he received the Haimo Award, a nationwide teaching prize for college math faculty, and in 2018 he won the Halmos-Ford writing award for a speech that inspired his book Mathematics for Human Flourishing (2020). His work has been featured in Quanta Magazine, Wired, and the New York Times.