University of Pennsylvania

Whether proving the Pythagorean theorem or delving into a 13th century Spanish poem, I revel in patterns. I look beneath the numbers and words on the page to understand their history: millennia of mathematical genius that contributed to a formula, contact of two cultures that forever altered the structure of a language, or an economic graph that really represents a mocha fad in Philadelphia. The presence of patterns in language has always fascinated me. Every word we speak bears the burden of ancient wars, socioeconomic disparity, and lost traditions, and continues to affect the lives of…