Peren Linn

First of all, I love the United States. I have great hope regarding the new synergy of America. I have spent my summers in different States and discovered many different and interesting facts about the country. That is why I decided to leave Europe, and "Keplershauptstadt", Linz, and move to America.

But even more interesting than that, is how I met Dr. Jonathan Farley, a world wide known mathematician, who was then at the Institut für Algebra at Johanees Kepler Universität Linz, and lattice theory. I watched the documentary, "Fermat's Last Theorem", by Simon Singh and John Lynch, and this was the first time I saw how deep feelings ran in math. The documentary was a little painful and made me cry. Reputedly, The Gap, the clothing chain, asked the man who came up with the main idea for the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, Andrew Wiles, to be in a jeans advertisement. This was the beginning of the idea to bring a "fresh wind" into math, especially for girls.

In 2009, the U.S. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported "a slight female advantage in computation in elementary and middle school," but, in complex problem solving, "a gender difference favoring males emerged in high school". Only 30% of the doctorates in mathematics went to women in 2006. In recent years, only 18% of the applicants for professorships in math and sciences in America have been women, with less than 10% of full professors in math and science being women. It has been reported that only 16% of Austrian professors are women. Researchers believe part of the problem is "the scarcity of women role models in math intensive careers leading girls to believe they do not belong in them". In 2005, Harvard University's president, Larry Summons, stated that girls could not do math as capably as boys, and might not want to.

The success of Danica McKellar's best-selling books, "Math Doesn't Suck" and "Kiss My Math," punched a hole in that theory big enough for astronaut Sally Ride to fly through. Inspired by Professor Rudolf Taschner's Math.Space in Vienna's Museum quartier, the bio-chemistry-themed jewelry and accessories of Oxford's University Dr. Lizzie Bums, and Austrian mathematical biologist Dr. Franziska Michor, I thought to bring math back into fashion.

To work with mathematics in this special form, you need silence. In silence there is mystery, and a kind of femine allure. So let me present to you the newest, hot stuff for girls-- and the first, but not last, math jeans!