Sheila Tobias

Sheila Tobias was born in Brooklyn, New York, on April 26, 1935. She received a B.A. in history and literature from Radcliffe College in 1957, and an M.A. and M. Phil. in history from Columbia University in 1961 and 1974, respectively. (She has also received a number of honorary degrees.) After working as a journalist and publicist in West Germany, and as a television journalist in the United States and Great Britain, Tobias began working in academia, first as a lecturer at the City College of New York. From 1967 to 1970 she served as assistant to Cornell University's Vice President for Academic Affairs and in 1969 organized a feminist conference at Cornell; this conference raised questions concerning the exclusion of material on women from traditional academic programming and led to the development of Cornell's Female Studies (later Women's Studies) program.

In 1970 she became associate provost atWesleyan University, with responsibilities for academic policy, affirmative action, and women's studies. During this time, she became aware of students' fears of mathematics, and began her work on math anxiety, arguing that math avoidance results from lack of confidence rather than lack of ability. She also co-founded a "math clinic" to help students overcome their anxiety; additional clinics were developed at other universities. In 1978 she wrote Overcoming Math Anxiety, in which she addressed gendered attitudes towards math, such as the belief that boys are more skilled at math than girls, and offered techniques for understanding and enjoying math. Other books built on this, as Tobias studied the ways in which math and science are taught and learned, and why the subjects are feared and avoided. In 1994 a new edition of Overcoming Math Anxiety was published, updated to include research showing the lack of actual knowledge of sex differences in brain organization and function.

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