June 25th, 2009

10 Secret Celebrity Math Learning Geeks

In a departure from our normally serious-minded focus here in the DreamBox blog, we decided to have a little fun. Because we’ve discovered that there’s a secret math geek lurking beneath the polished surface of each of these celebrities!

DreamBox Learning Presents 10 Celebrity Math and Science Geeks

1. Danica McKellar

(The Wonder Years)

Kevin Arnold was infatuated with Winnie the entire run of the hit show, The Wonder Years. If her character was anything like the actress, he should have wooed her with math wizardry. Danica McKellar is not only a former child star, she’s a New York Time best selling author and renowned math teacher. She wrote Math Doesn’t Suck and Kiss My Math, books that encourage middle-school girls to learn math. Winnie might have been whiny, but we love what Danica McKellar is doing for math.

2. Mayim Bialik

(Blossom)

Every young woman remembers the character Blossom’s iconic hat, best friend Six, and cool leather-jacket clad boyfriend. But few realize Mayim Bialik, the star of the 80’s sitcom would go on to get a Ph.D. in neuroscience at UCLA. Her dissertation was an investigation of Prader-Willi syndrome. Talk about an overachiever!

3. Lisa Kudrow

(Friends)

She played a spacey musician on the hit show “Friends”, but Lisa Kudrow is incredibly smart. She graduated from Vassar College with a degree in biology. And she briefly dated Harvard graduate and fellow celebrity geek Conan O’Brien.

4. Huey Lewis

(Musician)

Before Huey Lewis was with “The News,” he got a perfect score of 800 on the math portion of the SAT and studied engineering at Cornell. However, he dropped out after his junior year to continue studying music.

5. Montel Williams

(Talk show host)

Don’t mess with Montel! The award-winning talk show host and former Marine studied Mandarin and graduated with a degree in general engineering with a minor in international security affairs. After graduation, he was selected as a special duty officer specializing in cryptology. Who knew?

6. Terrence Howard

(Hustle & Flow, Iron Man)

No one would suspect that beneath his tough exterior, Terrence Howard is a science geek. He has a chemical engineering degree from Pratt University and desires a doctorate in physics. When asked, Howard effortlessly explains wave-particle theory and the law of entanglement. Howard definitely doesn’t fit the pocket-protector-wearing math geek stereotype.

7. Dr. Dan Grimaldi

(The Sopranos)

He played mobster twins Philly and Patsy Parisi in “the Sopranos”, but his one true love is math. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, a master’s degree in operations research from New York University, and a Ph.D. in data processing. He teaches in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York. With his mobster mystique, we’re sure he has no problem getting students to turn in their homework.

8. Art Garfunkel

(Musician)

Can Garfunkel add anything else to his long list of interests? He’s a Grammy award winning musician, as well as a poet, and actor, but he’s also a math geek! He holds a master’s degree in mathematics from Columbia and his brother, Jerome Garfunkel was the former member of the America and International Committees that wrote the specification for the COBOL programming language.

9. Cindy Crawford

(Actress and supermodel)

The super model is also super smart! Cindy Crawford was her high school Valedictorian. She received a full-ride scholarship to study chemical engineering at Northwestern University. After one quarter, she dropped out to model full time, but she could have had a fabulous, albeit less glamorous, science career.

10. Tom Hanks

(Oscar award winning actor)

He’s an academy award winning actor, but all he really wanted to be was an astronaut. Hanks is on the Board of Governors of the National Space Society. He wanted to join the astronaut program but we’re pretty sure he was meant to be an actor. And hey, he got to play an astronaut in Apollo 13.

Now, whenever your kids complain about their math homework, tell them that even cool celebrities study math and science!

Lisa Kudrow image courtesy of thebuibrothers.com

Tags: celebrities, math education, Math fun, Math in Real Life, summer math