1. How did you discover your passion for mathematics?

 

I liked math in school and I was good at it but it was not my passion. In the early years at school I also liked physics, chemistry and computer science. I would even say that computer science was my first passion and I started taking lectures in computer science at the university in my last years of high school. It was then when I realized that what I really like is logic. When I first saw the Gödel incompleteness theorems it was a shock for me. I believed that mathematics has the advantage that every question has a decisive answer and we just need to work hard enough to find it. But Gödel showed the opposite: every strong enough mathematical framework has statements that cannot be proven nor disproven in that framework. I wanted to learn everything I could about this result and this was the beginning of a long lasting passion for mathematics.

 

2. What was the reason you chose to work on set theory? Can you explain what set theory is to a non-expert audience? 


Set theory is an area of mathematical logic that has many natural examples for statements that cannot be proven or disproven in mathematics. I got interested in it because of these practical examples of Gödel's incompleteness phenomena and started to like the work on the boundaries of mathematics. In practice, set theory is the study of very large infinite objects. In many cases the objects are so large that our usual intuition about them fails, which makes them very interesting for me. In the last decades set theory has developed a deep structural understanding of very large objects that also reflects to smaller infinite objects, for example, the set of real numbers, and has applications in many branches of mathematics.

 

3. Looking back, are you happy to have chosen mathematics? What are the joys and challenges of being a mathematician? 

 

Yes! I love the job I am doing and this is the most important point for me. Of course there are many challenges, finding a professor position can be difficult, sometimes mathematical problems are very hard and one does not make progress for a long time and in a position like mine many other duties make it difficult to actually find time to do mathematics. In fact, when I was a student I did not see how much work it is to be a leader. It is great to be on many committees because it allows me to shape my community in a way that I think is best for it but in fact this requires a lot of time, work and energy. But whenever I prove a new theorem or see a student or postdoc of mine learning, growing and succeeding this is the best reward for past challenges. And sometimes I do find the time to sit in a cafe and spent some hours just thinking about a really hard mathematical problem. This is the real joy of being a mathematician for me.

 

4. Who have been your greatest supporters throughout your career?

 

The greatest supporters in my career were in fact some people that I did not expect to support me at the beginning. For example, a professor in a completely different branch of mathematics that I met because we both served on the same committee. Or a colleague that at the beginning did not like me but later became a close friend and mentor. So it is important to be open minded and did not expect support but rather carefully listen to everyone and thereby form a support network of people that give constructive and useful advice. 

 

5. In your experience, how important is it for women to have female role models in maths? Do you have one?

 

I did not notice how important it was before I had a female role model in math. When I came to Vienna as a young postdoc Vera Fischer just received the prestigious START prize. We shared an office for several years and I saw how the prize changed her position at the institute as well as in the international set theory community. This paved the way for me as I saw what is possible. In particular, at that time I already decided that I would apply for the same prize when I am ready. And I did a few years later, I received it and it also changed my life. Until today, Vera and I are in close contact and I am very grateful for having her as a friend in the set theoretic community. I have served in many committees and worked in various groups of researchers and every time I noticed how much it changes when there is more than just one woman in the room. 

 

6. You are engaged in many outreach activities. How did these activities shape your way of teaching? 

 

I started my engagement in outreach activities when I realized how important my role as a female role model in mathematics is because I wanted to be visible for students and kids that are questioning themselves if they are able to do mathematics. Soon afterwards it became clear to me that I really enjoy these activities and that I am good at it, so I accepted more invitations of this kind. I did not make the connection with my teaching at the university but it certainly had a positive impact on it. The more I think about how I can explain what I do to others the better I am also at doing this in my lectures. In outreach activities the passion and motivation for the subject is even more important than the content of the talk but also in lectures it is essential to communicate the ideas behind and motivation for the subject as otherwise students lose interest very quickly. We, the professors, are experts in the areas, so for us it might be obvious why a certain definition or theorem is done the way it is done and why it is important, a student has no chance to see this when they are confronted with the material for the first time. Explaining these concepts requires very similar skills than outreach activities, just at a different level content wise. 

 

7. Do you have any advice for students who would like to pursue an academic path?

 

Stay true to yourself, enjoy what you are doing, listen to everyone but then carefully decide what you apply and what not! 
 

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Further Links to interviews with Sandra Müller

Her own website:
https://dmg.tuwien.ac.at/sandramueller/, opens an external URL in a new window

Interview on website of Austrian Association of Women in Mathematics:
https://sites.google.com/view/a2wim/our-activities/interviews#h.f6c03n69ogg6, opens an external URL in a new window

Her view on the Two-Body Problem:
https://sites.google.com/view/a2wim/our-activities/spotlight?authuser=0#h.q284clsyk0kj, opens an external URL in a new window

A former interview at TU Wien:
https://www.tuwien.at/alle-news/news/woman-in-science-sandra-mueller-mathematikerin

Her START-prize on bacteria and infinities:
https://www.tuwien.at/tu-wien/aktuelles/news/news/bakterien-und-unendlichkeiten-zwei-start-preise-fuer-die-tu-wien