Fok-Shuen Leung

The global theme for September is 'simplicity' and we are honoured to host a renowned mathematician and award-winning UBC professor, Fok-Shuen Leung.

Dr Leung is a faculty member in the Mathematics Department at the University of British Columbia, where he is Undergraduate Chair and Professor of Teaching. He obtained his doctoral degree in Mathematics from the University of Oxford. He is a winner of the Canadian Mathematics Society Excellence in Teaching Award, the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences Education Prize, and two-time winner of the Killam Teaching Prize.

Every month we like to ask our speakers a handful of probing questions to give us a deeper glimpse into their life and relationship with creativity:

How do you define creativity and apply it in your life and career?

Math reveals that complicated things are simple; and just as often, that simple things are complicated. Planets tethered to the sun by gravity, and hurtling, spinning, along their elliptical tracks -- just calculus. On the other hand, addition -- 1+1=2 -- is really an example of a group action, and *that gets thorny quickly. In that light, creativity might be the ability to see things differently. Sometimes it helps to see that the Pieta is just a rock, and sometimes it helps to look at a rock and see that there's an uncarved Pieta hidden inside.*

Where do you find your best creative inspiration or energy?

The best moments turn out to be the moments in between. Say I have 45 minutes to think about math in my office at noon, and an hour to talk about math at a seminar across campus at 1:00. Creative things happen most often on the walk from one to the other.

What's one piece of creative advice or a tip you wish you'd known as a young person?

It takes practice! I like what Robert Hughes wrote about foundations: that "The philosophical beauty of Mondrian's squares and grids begins with the empirical beauty of his apple trees." When I started really getting into math, my view of the subject was pretty romantic. I was an undergrad, so this may have been appropriate and inevitable. But I could have used a bit more sense with my sensibility.

Who (living or dead) would you most enjoy hearing speak at CreativeMornings?

Hildegard von Bingen. It seems like she had something interesting to say about everything. I think there's a good chance she would have accepted. And she could have provided the musical prelude, too.

What are you reading these days?

"Pachinko" by Min Jin Lee and "Vesper Flights" by Helen Macdonald. Really beautiful reads by authors who clearly like the sounds of words.

How does your life and career compare to what you envisioned for your future when you were a sixth grader?

When I was in sixth grade, I put on a heavily edited production of Macbeth for my school (no witches, no real tragedy, mainly just sword-fighting), and sold drawings to my classmates for snack money. Now, part of my job is to make accessible the great works of mathematics, and to write about math for snack money. So not much has changed.

What are you proudest of in your life?

I'm pretty proud of my kid. :)