Oh becomes first Korean female mathematician to get tenure at Yale
Oh Hee
By Kwon Ji-youn
A Korean mathematician has become the first female to gain tenure at a respected Ivy League university, the Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) announced Wednesday.
Oh Hee, a visiting professor at KIAS, was appointed a tenured professor at Yale University. She is the first female to have been appointed a tenured professor in the mathematics department in the university’s 312-year history.
“I used to be a student of Yale University professor Gregori Margulis,” Oh said. “I am honored to have now become his colleague.”
Oh said she hadn’t always wanted to be a mathematician, but she was drawn to the fact that math was not about memorizing but learning.
Her first choice was medical school and math only her second.
“I thought about studying another year to get into medical school,” she said. “But my calculus class was fascinating, so I just continued my schooling as a math major.”
Oh began participating in other school activities in her junior year at Seoul National University but began to miss solving math problems.
“I studied social sciences for a while, but in social sciences, there is no one answer,” she said. “So I returned to my math classes.”
After graduating from college, Oh received a doctoral degree from Yale University and taught at Princeton University, the California Institute of Technology and Brown University.
“I invested time and energy into my studies,” she said, when asked how she became so good at math. “Mathematicians are good at math because they enjoy it.”