In the early ’00s, Danica McKellar decided to go back to school and become a mathematician. “The Wonder Years” actor attended UCLA and pursued a degree in mathematics after realizing she had a knack for the subject. She told ET, “Math was challenging and I did well at it. And I love this feeling that my value, the important stuff had nothing to do with how I looked or television.” McKellar and several of her classmates even developed a theorem, which is a theory proven to be true through “mathematical operations,” per Math World.
In 2006, McKellar explained her theorem to NPR, saying, “These two properties, percolation and Gibbs States multiplicity, they each have a crucial temperate above which they do not happen and below which they do happen. And we proved that for this model, for the Ashkin-Teller Model, those two temperatures are the same.” That sounds a bit complicated, and we’re sure it is, but McKellar wouldn’t have it any other way. She loves challenging herself, and she did just that.
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The actor even addressed how fulfilling becoming a mathematician has been, especially coming from the acting world. She told NPR, “I’d rather use my powers in math to be an example that makes people question their stereotypes about what a mathematician looks like.” Even though McKellar has since returned to the entertainment industry, she has never truly let go of mathematics.
