Erica Gail Klarreich is an American

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

journalist A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...

and science popularizer.

Early life and education

Klarreich's father was a professor of mathematics, and her mother was a mathematics teacher. Klarreich obtained her Ph.D. in mathematics under the guidance of Yair Nathan Minsky at

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...

in 1997.

Mathematics

As a mathematician, Klarreich proved that the boundary of the curve complex is

homeomorphic In mathematics and more specifically in topology, a homeomorphism ( from Greek roots meaning "similar shape", named by Henri Poincaré), also called topological isomorphism, or bicontinuous function, is a bijective and continuous function betw ...

to the space of ending laminations.

Popular science writing

As a popular science writer, Klarreich's work has appeared in publications such as ''

Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

'', ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...

'', ''

New Scientist ''New Scientist'' is a popular science magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organ ...

'', and ''

Quanta Magazine ''Quanta Magazine'' is an editorially independent online publication of the Simons Foundation covering developments in physics, mathematics, biology and computer science. History ''Quanta Magazine'' was initially launched as ''Simons Science ...

''. She is one of the winners of the 2021

Joint Policy Board for Mathematics The Joint Policy Board for Mathematics (JPBM) consists of the American Mathematical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. The Board has nea ...

Communications Award for her popular science writing.

Personal life

As of 2025, Klarreich lives in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...

Selected publications

Mathematics

* "The boundary at infinity of the curve complex and the relative

Teichmüller space In mathematics, the Teichmüller space T(S) of a (real) topological (or differential) surface S is a space that parametrizes complex structures on S up to the action of homeomorphisms that are isotopic to the identity homeomorphism. Teichmülle ...

" * "Semiconjugacies between Kleinian group actions on the

Riemann sphere In mathematics, the Riemann sphere, named after Bernhard Riemann, is a Mathematical model, model of the extended complex plane (also called the closed complex plane): the complex plane plus one point at infinity. This extended plane represents ...

Popular science

*
Biologists join the dots
, ''

'', v. 413, n. 6855, pp. 450–452, 2001. *
Foams and honeycombs
, ''

American Scientist ''American Scientist'' (informally abbreviated ''AmSci'') is an American bimonthly science and technology magazine published since 1913 by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society. In the beginning of 2000s the headquarters was moved to ...

'', v. 88, n. 2, pp. 152–161, 2000. *
Quantum cryptography: Can you keep a secret?
, ''Nature'', v. 418, n. 6895, pp. 270–272, 2002. *
Huygens's clocks revisited
, ''American Scientist'', v. 90, pp. 322–323, 2002.

References

External links

Klarreich's personal page
Living people American geometers 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Stony Brook University alumni Place of birth missing (living people) American science communicators Quantum cryptography Mathematical chemistry 20th-century American women mathematicians 21st-century American women mathematicians Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-journalist-stub