Danica McKellar – aka little Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years – is starring a new series for Lifetime called Inspector Mom, about, you guessed it, a mom who moonlights as a detective. The series premiered this weekend, and yes, the title’s completely cheesy, but I watched it because I’m a sucker for smart women.
How smart is she? She has a degree in mathematics and recently published a proof called Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on Z. Which is so 2002 ῵ everyone knows the singularity of ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models is where it’s at today ῵ but still, not bad.
In addition to being wicked smart herself, Danica actually works to help young girls get smarter. She answers math questions on her website, and she has a book coming out in August for middle-school girls called Math Doesn’t Suck, which she says she wrote because, “I believe that growing into a fabulous woman requires smarts. With the media and Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton, girls haven’t been developing their brains as much as they could. I would like to put forth an alternate role model and way of thinking about being fabulous.” Amen, sister!
Speaking of fabulous, here’s the brainiac all grown up:
Yes, I know these photos focus on her looks and not her brains, but since I don’t have a copy of her latest CAT-scan, you’ll just have to imagine what the inside of her head looks like.
