Brain Cells and Mathematics
Tim McLarnan wrote the following response to the article "Researcher says men have more brain cells", published in the Richmond Palladium Item on Sunday, March 5, 2000. The faculty of the Mathematics Department joined Tim in signing the response, and sending it to the Palladium Item. The original article is quoted in full below the response of the Earlham College Mathematics Department.
We, the members of the Earlham College Mathematics Department, are very much concerned by the implications of an article in March 5th's Palladium-Item. The article quoted a neuroscientist from the University of Cincinnati as asserting that differences in the brains of men and women explain why men are better at math than women.
We can't judge the merits of research counting the brain cells in people's heads, and we are fully aware of the difficulties of relating brain function to behavior. With decades of collective experience teaching mathematics at the college level, though, we can certainly judge the performance of men and women as students of mathematics. We know what actually happens in math classes.
Women are just as good at math as men. At Earlham, half the math majors are women, and those women include some of our strongest majors. Half the students in our elementary classes are women. A survey of recent calculus classes showed equal numbers of male and female students. The average female student scored about half a letter grade better than the average male student. At the faculty level, half of Earlham's math professors are women, and our female faculty members have published more scholarly papers in mathematics than have their male colleagues. To anyone believing that women cannot do well at mathematics - or that men cannot do badly - our experience offers abundant evidence to the contrary.
Do men excel at quantitative tasks, and women at verbal tasks? Then how can one understand men like Shakespeare, Milton, and Dostoyevsky whose writings are models for both men and women? How can one understand female mathematicians like Sophie Germain, Sonia Kovalevsky, and Emmy Noether whose work is also universally admired, despite the severe social handicaps suffered in their day by women doing mathematics?
In our day, mathematical and technical skills play a critical and growing role in the modern economy. The number of women working in mathematics at all levels is large and is growing. (28% of the Ph.D. degrees granted last year to U.S. citizens were awarded to women.) It does an immense disservice to the young women of our community to suggest that they lack the capability to develop skills leading to math-related careers.
Dr. de Courten-Myers may well be correct in counting brain cells. What she is counting, though, is not something we see in our classrooms. Earlham and the wider mathematical community are deeply committed to helping all our students to discover and to realize their mathematical potential, both for their good and for the good they may bring to society. It is absolutely clear to us that our female students share fully with their male colleagues in the future of our science and in its practical applications.
"Researcher says men have more brain cells" - Richmond Palladium Item, March 5, 2000
After counting and researching for 10 years, a scientist has concluded that men have more brain cells than women.
"It doesn't necessarily make them any smarter than females. But it might help explain why males, in general, are better in math," said Dr. Gabrielle M. de Courten-Myers, a University of Cincinnati researcher.
She worked with scientists at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland to calculate the number of cells, called neurons, in a brain.
Having more neurons may help men focus on a task such as solving a problem or sensing where they are.
"Here's what it means," de Courten-Myers said in a story published in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer. "It really is much easier if the female drives and the male reads the maps. The other way around leads to many disputes."
Copyright © 2007 by Earlham College Mathematics Department. All rights reserved.
Last Updated: November 2007.