Mathematician Eugenia Cheng: ‘We hate having rules imposed on us'

Eugenia Cheng combines home baking with higher-dimensional category theory. She talks about pudding, infinity, and why geeks are the new alphas

Eugenia Cheng is a British mathematician who is senior lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her main interest is higher-dimensional category theory but she has also written a book about the maths of baking entitled How To Bake Pi. Her latest book is Beyond Infinity: An Expedition into the Outer Limits of Mathematics.

What is higher-dimensional category theory? Can you describe it in a sentence?
It is the mathematics of mathematics. It does for mathematics the same thing that mathematics does for the world - it makes connections between things and it highlights patterns between things, so that we can be more efficient about how we use our brain power.