It is well known that teenage boys tend to do better 1 math than girls, that male high school students are more likely than their female counterparts 2 advanced math courses like calculus, that virtually all the great mathematicians 3 men. Are women born with 4 mathematical ability Or does society’s sexism slow their progress In 1980 two Johns Hopkins University researchers tried 5 the eternal nature/nurture debate. Julian Stanley and Camilla Benhow 6 10,000 talented seventh-and eighth-graders between 1972 and 1979. Using the Scholastic Aptitude Test in which math questions 7 to measure ability rather than knowledge, they discovered 8 sex differences. 9 the verbal abilities of the males and females 10 differed, 11 girls scored over 500 (on a scale of 200 to 800) 12 mathematical ability; at the 700 level, the ratio was 14 to 1. The conclusion: males have 13 superior mathematical reasoning ability. Benhow and Stanley’s findings, 14 are published in Science, disturbed some men and 15 women. Now there is 16 for those people in a new study from the University of Chicago that suggests math 17 not, after all, a natural male domain. Prof. Zalman Usiskin studied 1,366 tenth-graders. They were selected from 18 classes and tested on their ability to solve geometry proofs, a subject requiring 19 abstract reasoning and spatial ability. The conclusion 20 by Usiskin: there are no sex differences in math ability.