When excelling in math is glamourous

After winning the Freshman First Honor Prize, the President's Award for Academic Achievement — twice — Class of 1939 Princeton Scholar Award, a spot on the USA Today All-USA College Academic Team, numerous fellowships, and being named a Barry M. Goldwater Scholar, what more could Lillian Pierce '02 want?

Her picture in Glamour Magazine. The senior won Glamour's 44th Annual Top 10 College Women competition and appears in its October 2001 issue.

The application process was more thorough, Pierce said, than any other scholarship for which she'd applied. The magazine requested newspaper clippings, art portfolios and performance arts videotapes, all in addition to the standard essays and teacher recommendations.

"It was quite detailed," Pierce said. "One of the biggest packets that I've sent off. It's actually the first scholarship that wanted a full portfolio of all my activities."

When Assistant Dean of the College Marcia Cantarella urged her to apply for the contest last year, Pierce agreed, but with little expectation.

"I didn't think I had a chance at winning, so I didn't think it would affect me at all," she said.

But Pierce did win, as she found out in July, and it certainly has affected her. This summer, Glamour flew her from Los Angeles for a daylong photo shoot in New York.

In addition to her magazine appearance, Pierce won a $1,000 cash prize and a weekend trip to New York City.

Perhaps most important of all is the chance Pierce's magazine appearance gives her to be a role model. She has already been contacted to speak at schools about her experience with math, and she said she hopes to have some positive impact on Glamour's readers.

"It won't necessarily affect the generation reading the magazine, but it might make the young 20- to 25-year-old women think that math may be an option for their children," Pierce said.

For her part, Pierce has studied math for most of her life. She can actually remember an exact moment when she realized her love for the subject.

"I must have been about four years old, and my mother taught me to do long division," Pierce said. "At that point, I didn't even know what it was, I just loved the connections between numbers. I can remember the exact pen, and my mother's writing on the piece of paper."

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

For most of her childhood, Pierce was home-schooled. Her mother, an accredited California State teacher, ran a six-student private school in a building constructed by Pierce's father, a contractor.

She had a defined school day — from 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. — but otherwise had freedom to explore her interests, which included publishing a weekly newspaper that had subscribers as far away as Africa, reading a British novel a day or running her own chemistry lab sessions.

Pierce is also an accomplished violinist, the concertmaster of the Princeton University Orchestra and founder of the Nassau String Quartet. Though talented enough to consider music as a profession, she chose math instead.

"When I came to Princeton, I knew I was deciding not to do music for my career. I want to have music in each of my days," she said. "It's such a fundamental part of my life, no matter what I do for my career, I'll always have music."

Pierce said she has mixed feelings about her senior year. While excited about her thesis — for which she is reading about the Reimann Zeta function — she'll miss Princeton.

"It's kind of sad . . . I looked forward to coming to Princeton for so long that in comparison, the number of years I've been here are only half that," she said. "But I feel like it will still be available to me if I come back and visit."

Pierce plans to begin her PhD next year in mathematics, and ultimately hopes to become a professor in math at a liberal arts university.

In the meantime, she'll easily fulfill her tenure as a Glamour Girl this year.