64 mathematicians
For Wikipedia’s February women in mathematics edit-a-thon, I had too many other things going on to keep up the same pace of article creation that I did for women in statistics last fall. But I still found the time to celebrate the accomplishments of 64 women (63 new to Wikipedia, one significantly expanded). They are:
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Valérie Berthé. Director of research at CNRS, where she studies symbolic dynamics, combinatorics on words, discrete geometry, numeral systems, tessellations, and fractals. Vice-president and director of publications for the Société mathématique de France, and active with Femmes et mathématiques. Member of the Legion of Honour.
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Lillian K. Bradley. Mathematics educator in Texas. The first African-American woman to earn a doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin, despite the dominance of the mathematics department there by R. L. Moore, notorious for his racism. One of the first people to win a National Science Faculty Fellowship.
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Lucia Caporaso. Professor at Roma Tre. Researcher in algebraic geometry, arithmetic geometry, tropical geometry and enumerative geometry. Winner of the Bartolozzi Prize and invited speaker at the 2018 ICM.
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Bettye Anne Case. Olga Larson Professor Emerita of Mathematics at Florida State University. Researcher in complex variables, mathematics education, and the history of mathematics. Editor of Complexities: Women in Mathematics. Lifetime Service Award winner and inaugural Fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics.
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Margaret Cheney. Yates Chair and Professor of Mathematics at Colorado State University. Inaugural Lise Meitner Visiting Professor at Lund University. SIAM Fellow “for contributions to inverse problems in acoustics and electromagnetic theory”. Honorary doctorate from Oberlin College.
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Annalisa Crannell (daughter of Carol Jo). Professor at Franklin & Marshall College. Expert on water waves, chaos theory, and geometric perspective. Governor of the MAA and executive committee of the Association for Women in Mathematics. Author of books on career advice for mathematicians, teaching writing to mathematicians, and the mathematical analysis of art. Winner of the Haimo Award.
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Carol Jo Crannell (mother of Annalisa). Solar physicist at NASA Goddard, expert on solar flares and particle showers. Chaired the Committee on the Status of Women in Physics of the American Physical Society. Fellow of the APS and the AAAS. Outstanding Achievement Award of Women in Aerospace “for her dedication to expanding women’s opportunities” in aerospace.
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Helen F. Cullen. Topologist, professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, author of a standard topology text, outstanding alumna of the Boston Latin School, and (sadly) outspoken antisemite.
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Ermelinda DeLaViña. Professor and administrator at the University of Houston–Downtown. Graph theorist and expert on the automated discovery of conjectures. The first in her family to earn a college degree.
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Caren Diefenderfer. Professor at Hollins College. Chief reader for the AP Calculus exam. President of the National Numeracy Network. Winner of the Haimo Award.
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Suzanne Dorée. Professor and chair at Augsburg University. Director of the MAA. Group theorist and mathematics education specialist. Winner of a Distinguished Teaching Award from the MAA.
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Mary Flahive. Professor at Oregon State. Number theorist, and author of books on difference equations and Diophantine approximation. Served on the Joint Committee On Women In the Mathematical Sciences and (with Maria Vitulli, another edit-a-thon participant) studied patterns in job offers to women with new Ph.D.s in mathematics. They found that, although men and women were hired at similar rates by research universities, teaching schools tended to hire more women while industry tended to hire more men.
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Nina Gantert. Chair for probability at TU Munich, and researcher on random walks, transport in disordered media, and physical and biological applications of probability theory. Fellow of the IMS.
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Anne Gelb. John G. Kemeny Parents Professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth College. Researcher on image analysis and applications in medicine, climatology and fluid dynamics.
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Maria Gordina. Professor at the at the University of Connecticut, where she studies heat kernels on infinite-dimensional groups. Humboldt Fellow, Simons Fellow, and winner of the Michler Prize.
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Catherine Greenhill. Researcher with highly cited publications on random sampling methods in graph theory. The first woman in the mathematics department at the University of New South Wales to be promoted to associate professor. Winner of the Hall Medal and the Heyde Medal.
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Maria Hasse. The first female professor in the faculty of mathematics and science at TU Dresden. Author of books on set theory and category theory; namesake and independent discoverer of the Gallai–Hasse–Roy–Vitaver theorem in graph coloring.
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Katherine Heinrich. Professor at Simon Fraser University and administrator at the University of Regina. Researcher in graph theory and combinatorial designs. First female president of the Canadian Mathematical Society. Winner of the Adrien Pouliot Award for her work in mathematics education.
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Aparna Higgins. Professor at the University of Dayton. Graph theorist and algebraist known for her encouragement of undergraduate research. Director of Project NExT. Winner of a Distinguished Teaching Award from the MAA and of the Haimo Award.
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Anne Lester Hudson. Researcher in topological semigroups who moved from a tenured position at a research university to Armstrong State to devote more time to mathematics education. Coach for the US team at the International Mathematical Olympiad. Carnegie Outstanding Professor of the Year. Winner of the Haimo Award.
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Eleny Ionel. Professor and chair at Stanford. Researcher in symplectic geometry and Gromov–Witten invariants. Sloan Fellow, Simons Fellow, and invited speaker at the 2002 ICM.
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Ingrid Van Keilegom. Professor of operations research and business statistics at KU Leuven, and extraordinary professor at the Université catholique de Louvain. Expert in survival analysis, observational error, econometrics, and nonparametric statistics. Fellow of the IMS and the ASA.
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Patricia Clark Kenschaft. Professor emeritus at Montclair State. Author and editor of nine books on mathematics, mathematics and the environment, and mathematics outreach. Founded New Jersey Association for Women in Mathematics and New Jersey Faculty Forum. Chaired the MAA Committee on Participation of Women, Committee on Mathematics and the Environment, and NCTM Equity and Diversity Integration Task Force. Winner of the Hay Award and Falconer Lecturer.
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Genevieve M. Knight. African-American mathematics educator. Professor emeritus and Wilson H. Elkins Distinguished Professor at Coppin State. Teacher of the Year in two states. Distinguished Teaching Award of the MAA, Lifetime Achievement Award of the NCTM, Cox–Talbot Lecturer, and Fellow of the AWM.
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Ewa Kubicka. Professor at the University of Louisville. Expert in graph theory and actuarial mathematics. Introduced the concept of the chromatic sum of a graph.
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Jean A. Larson. Professor and faculty senate chair at the University of Florida. Researcher in infinitary combinatorics, known for her work on partition relations for countable ordinals. Frequent co-author of Paul Erdős. Namesake of Drake–Larson linear spaces, finite geometries in which no line has exactly two, three, or six points.
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Anita Layton. Robert R. & Katherine B. Penn Professor of Mathematics at Duke University. Uses computational mathematics and partial differential equations to model kidney function. Author of Mathematical Modeling in Renal Physiology. Teaches about how to use differential equations to survive the zombie apocalypse.
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Miriam Leiva. Bonnie Cone Distinguished Professor for Teaching Emerita at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Immigrant from Cuba who became the first American hispanic women to earn a doctorate in mathematics and mathematics education. Founded TODOS: Mathematics for All. NCTM Gilliland Equity Lecturer and winner of the NCTM Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics Education.
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Sherry Li. Senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where she develops code for solving systems of linear equations. SIAM Fellow “for advances in the development of fast and scalable sparse matrix algorithms and fostering their use in large-scale scientific and engineering applications”.
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Ling Long. Professor at Louisiana State University. Researcher on modular forms, elliptic surfaces, and dessins d’enfants. Winner of the Michler Prize.
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Julie Lutz. Former Boeing Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Science Education at Washington State University and professor emeritus at the University of Washington. Researcher on planetary nebulae and symbiotic binary stars. President of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Fellow of the RAS and AAAS. Winner of the United Negro College Fund President’s Award.
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Barbara MacCluer. Professor emeritus at the University of Virginia. Researcher in operator theory and composition operators; author of two books on operator theory and one textbook on functional analysis.
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Hélène Massam. Professor of mathematics and statistics at York University, known for her research on the Wishart distribution and on graphical models. Fellow of the IMS.
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Uta Merzbach. Theresienstadt survivor. First curator of mathematical instruments at the Smithsonian Institution. Author of A History of Mathematics.
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Ineke De Moortel. Professor of applied mathematics at the University of St Andrews, director of research in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at St Andrews, and president of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society. Researcher on the solar corona. Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and Royal Society of Edinburgh. Leverhulme Prize winner.
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Emmy Murphy. Assistant professor at Northwestern. Symplectic geometer. Sloan Fellow. Winner of a prize of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium and of the Birman Prize. Invited speaker at the 2018 ICM.
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Sara Negri. Professor of theoretical philosophy at the University of Helsinki. Author of two books on proof theory. Humboldt Fellow.
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Nancy K. Nichols. Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Reading. Expert on numerical methods for differential equations, linear algebra, and control theory, and data assimilation. SIAM Fellow.
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Olympia Nicodemi. Distinguished Teaching Professor of Mathematics at SUNY Geneseo. Researcher on wavelets and the history of mathematics. Author of two mathematics textbooks. Significantly increased female enrollment in mathematics at her campus. Winner of the Haimo Award.
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Helena J. Nussenzveig Lopes. Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Expert on the Euler equations for incompressible flow in fluid dynamics. Chaired the SIAM Activity Group on Analysis of Partial Differential Equations. National Order of Scientific Merit and SIAM Fellow.
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Ortrud Oellermann. Professor at the University of Winnipeg. Graph theorist, author of Applied and Algorithmic Graph Theory and of well-cited papers on metric dimension and convex hulls in graphs. Invented the concept of highly irregular graphs. Winner of the Silver British Association Medal, the Naude Medal, and the Hall Medal.
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Laura Person. Distinguished Teaching Professor and academic coordinator for volleyball at SUNY Potsdam. Low-dimensional topologist. Author of Write Your Own Proofs In Set Theory and Discrete Mathematics. Winner of the Stephens Award.
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Sonia Petrone. Professor at Bocconi University. Known for her use of Bernstein polynomials for nonparametric methods in Bayesian statistics. Author of Dynamic Linear Models with R. President of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis. Winner of the Lindley Prize and Fellow of ISBA.
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Jennifer Quinn. Professor at the University of Washington Tacoma, governor of the MAA, and co-editor-in-chief of Math Horizons. Graph theorist, and author of Proofs that Really Count: The Art of Combinatorial Proof. Winner of an MAA Distinguished Teaching Award, the Haimo Award, the Choice Award, and the Beckenbach Book Prize.
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Gesine Reinert. University Professor in Statistics at Oxford and Fellow of Keble College, of the Alan Turing Institute, and of the IMS. Researcher in the probability theory and statistics of biological sequences and biological networks.
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Judith Rousseau. Professor of statistics at Oxford, Fellow of Jesus College, of the IMS, and of ISBA. Researcher on frequentist properties of Bayesian methods. Winner of the Newbold Prize.
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Karen Saxe. DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics at Macalester College and director of the Washington DC office of the AMS. Functional analyst, author of Beginning Functional Analysis, and expert on mathematical issues in social justice. Helped redraw Minnesota’s congressional districts and advised senator Al Franken. Winner of an MAA Distinguished Teaching Award. Given an honorary doctorate by Bard College.
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Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb. Reader in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge and Fellow of Jesus College and of the Alan Turing Institute. Uses the solutions to partial differential equations to fill in gaps in digital images and restore ancient frescoes. Author of Partial Differential Equation Methods for Image Inpainting. Winner of the Whitehead Prize and the Leverhulme Prize. Mary Cartwright Lecturer.
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Brigitte Servatius. Professor at Worcester Polytechnic and editor-in-chief of the Pi Mu Epsilon Journal. Researcher on matroids, structural rigidity, graph duality, and configurations of points and lines. Author of Combinatorial Rigidity and of Configurations from a Graphical Viewpoint.
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Martha Siegel. Professor emerita at Towson University, where she founded a program connecting applied mathematics majors to projects in local business and government. Editor of Mathematics Magazine. Author of two discrete mathematics and precalculus textbooks. Chaired the MAA Curriculum Guide committee. Winner of the Gung and Yu Distinguished Service Award.
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Ruth Silverman. Researcher at the University of Maryland, where (with Angela Wu, below) she did highly-cited work on \(k\)-means clustering and nearest neighbor search in computational geometry. One of the founders of the Association for Women in Mathematics.
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Evelyn Silvia. Professor at UC Davis. Expert in starlike functions and functional analysis, and active in the improvement of secondary-school mathematics education. Winner of the Haimo Award.
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Angela Spalsbury. Dean and chief administrator of Kent State Geauga. President of Pi Mu Epsilon. Functional analyst and author of The Joys of Haar Measure.
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Gwyneth Stallard. Professor at the Open University. Researcher in complex dynamics and the iteration of meromorphic functions. Chaired the Women in Mathematics Committee of the London Mathematical Society. Winner of the Whitehead Prize. OBE. Special Ada Lovelace Day award. Mary Cartwright Lecturer.
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Susanna Terracini. Professor at the University of Turin. Known for her research on chaos in Hamiltonian dynamical systems, including the \(n\)-body problem, reaction–diffusion systems, and the Schrödinger equation. Winner of the Vinti Prize and Finzi Prize.
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Paula Tretkoff. Professor at Texas A&M and director of research at CNRS. Researcher in number theory, noncommutative geometry, and hypergeometric functions. Author of Complex Ball Quotients and Line Arrangements in the Projective Plane and Periods and Special Functions in Transcendence.
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Katalin Vesztergombi. Emeritus associate professor at Eötvös Loránd University and a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Part of the same class of gifted Hungarian high school mathematicians that produced László Lovász, József Pelikán, and others. Author of highly cited works in graph theory and discrete geometry, and of the book Discrete Mathematics: Elementary and Beyond.
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Eva Viehmann. Chair in arithmetic geometry at TU Munich. Winner of the von Kaven Award for her work on the Langlands program. Invited speaker at the 2018 ICM.
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Sarah L. Waters. Professor of applied mathematics at Oxford, Fellow of St. Anne’s College, and Leverhulme Senior Research Fellow of the Royal Society. Researcher in biological fluid mechanics, tissue engineering, and their applications in medicine. Winner of the Whitehead Prize.
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Virginia Vassilevska Williams. Steven and Renee Finn Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Known for her research on graphs and matrices including a breakthrough algorithm for fast matrix multiplication. Sloan Fellow. Invited speaker at the 2018 ICM.
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Karen Yeats. Canada Research Chair in Combinatorics in Quantum Field Theory at the University of Waterloo. Researcher on connections between combinatorics and quantum field theory. Author of A Combinatorial Perspective on Quantum Field Theory.
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Angela Y. Wu. Professor emerita at American University. With Ruth Silverman (above) did highly-cited work on \(k\)-means clustering and nearest neighbor search in computational geometry. Founding chair of the annual Vision Geometry Conference. Two-time president of Upsilon Pi Epsilon.
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Jean Yang. Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney, known for her work on variance reduction for microarrays, and for inferring proteins from mass spectrometry data. Winner of the Moran Medal.
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Sarah Zerbes. Professor at University College London. Algebraic number theorist whose interests include \(L\)-functions, modular forms, \(p\)-adic Hodge theory, and Iwasawa theory. Council member of the London Mathematical Society. Winner of the Leverhulme Prize and Whitehead Prize.
My guess is that there are typically some 500 new Wikipedia articles on mathematicians every year, the vast majority of them men, so this is really still only a drop in the bucket. New articles on male mathematicians can usually skate by stating only their affiliation and specialty, but new articles on women face greater scrutiny, and are likely to be proposed for deletion unless they make a clear statement of why they were significant or how their significance has been recognized. Nevertheless, there are still large numbers of women for whom such a statement would be easy to make but for whom we still have no article, so there’s plenty more to do.
(G+)