Episode 7 of the Curious Cube video blog from the Mathematical Association of America hosts a special episode featuring the 2022 USA European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad team. Learn more about the EGMO (April 6-12, hosted in Hungary this year) and get the inside scoop on this year's team by watching this YouTube video.
The March 2022 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society has an article about how Milena Harned published her first professional, peer-reviewed mathematics paper at the age of 16. Read about "One Teen’s Journey from Local Math Club to Professional Publication" by Scott Hershberger.
Maria J. Esteban of the Université Paris Dauphine has been awarded the Blaise Pascal Medal of the European Academy of Sciences for 2021. Her work specializes in nonlinear partial differential equations and their applications in fluid mechanics and quantum physics and chemistry. She received her PhD from Université Pierre et Marie Curie in 1981 under the direction of Pierre-Louis Lions. She is director of research at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). She has been president of the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and of Société de Mathématiques Appliquées et Industrielles and chair of the Applied Mathematics Committee of the European Mathematical Society. She is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), an honorary member of the London Mathematical Society, and a member of the European Academy of Sciences and the Basque Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. She was awarded the SIAM Prize for Distinguished Service to the Profession (2019) and the Prix Jacques-Louis Lions of the French Academy of Sciences and was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio de Janeiro in 2018. (Announcement from the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Volume 69, No. 2 (February 2022), p300.)
Helena Nussenzveig Lopes of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro received the 2022 Award in Mathematics from The World Academy of Sciences "for her contribution to the rigorous mathematical analysis of incompressible fluid flow models at or near turbulent regimes." She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1991. She was a member of the faculty of the University of Campinas from 1992 to 2012, when she moved to Rio de Janeiro, where she headed the mathematics department from 2014 to 2016. She is a Fellow of the AMS and of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). (Announcement from the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Volume 69, No. 2 (February 2022), p302.)
Congratulations to Byrna Kra, the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor at Northwestern University, who has been elected as the next president of the American Mathematical Society. Kra will be only the fifth woman to be president of the AMS since its founding in 1889, but the third consecutive woman to hold the position when she takes office in February 2023 for a two year term, following Jill Pipher (Brown University) and Ruth Charney (Brandeis University). Read more about Byrna Kra in a 2020 article in Quanta Magazine.
A 2016 video from Nova's Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers features Danica McKellar talking about how math helped her to discover that she is so much more than the child actress who played Winnie Cooper.
Austria's Anna Kiesenhofer won the gold medal in the women's road race at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics (held in 2021). But she also has a master's degree in mathematics from the University of Cambridge, England and a PhD in applied mathematics from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain. Kiesenhofer is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) and is part of a group researching nonlinear partial differential equations which arise in mathematical physics. For more information, see her Wikipedia entry.
Congratulations to Melanie Matchett Wood of Harvard University who has been named a co-recipient of the 2021 National Science Foundation (NSF) Alan T. Waterman Award for “fundamental contributions in number theory, algebraic geometry, topology, and probability.” She is the first woman mathematician to receive the honor. For more information, see the August 2021 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
From the June/July 2021 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society (page 1046): "The Regeneron Science Talent Search was held virtually in March 2021. The following young scientists, whose work involves the mathematical sciences, are among the top winners in the 2021 Regeneron Science Talent Search. Yunseo Choi, eighteen, of Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, was awarded first place for her project, “On Two-Sided Matching in Infinite Markets,” in which she studied matching algorithms that work for a finite number of couples and determined which import-ant properties would still work for an infinite number of pairs. Matching theory has numerous real-life applications, including matching organ donors to recipients, assigning medical school applicants to rotations, and pairing potential couples in dating apps. Choi received a cash award of US$250,000." (Also see the next item about Yunseo Choi)
Congratulations to Team USA (Serena An, Yunseo Choi, Sanjana Das, Jessica Wan) for winning 2nd place in the 2021 European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad. All four students also received individual gold medals. The competition again took place virtually April 9-15 with 55 teams and 213 girls competing. For more information, see the MAA press release, and to see the problems from the 2021 competition, visit the EGMO website.
The mission of the website Meet a Mathematician is to "share stories of mathematicians from different backgrounds, especially from historically excluded groups." The site includes many short videos of interviews with women mathematicians.
The movie Secrets of the Surface: The Mathematical Vision of Maryam Mirzakhani examines the life and mathematical work of Maryam Mirzakhani. You can watch the trailer at the film's website and read the film's synopsis and production information on the 59 minute film.
Congratulations to Team USA who earned fourth place in the 2020 European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad. The competition took place virtually April 15-21, and 53 countries competed. Each member of the U.S. team also earned an individual medal for her performance. For more information about the team sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America, see the MAA website. To see the problems from the 2020 competition, visit the EGMO website.
The May 2020 newsletter of the International Mathematical Union Committee for Women in Mathematics is available at https://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/CWM/Initiatives/CWMNewsletter3.pdf. This issue contains an interview with Cheryl Praeger, the second person to be appointed as a professor of mathematics at an Australian university.
In 2018, at the World Meeting for Women in Mathematics in Rid de Janeiro, delegates voted to establish May 12 as a yearly global Celebration of Women in Mathematics on Maryam Mirzakhani's birthday. The first celebration occurred on May 12, 2019. Stories about the events on that day from around the world can be found in the article "May 12: Celebrating Women in Mathematics - From One Idea to One Hundred Events" in the December 12 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
Congratulations to Cheryl Praeger for being awarded the Australian Prime Minister's prize for science for her outstanding contributions in group theory and combinatorial mathematics that have led to advances in algebra research and computer cryptography. For more information see the story in The Guardian.
From the IMU Newsletter for September 2019: The Committee for Women in Mathematics CWM is happy to announce the forthcoming publication of the book:
World Women in Mathematics 2018 - Proceedings of the First World Meeting for Women in Mathematics (WM)2 (https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030211691). The estimated publication date for the hardcover is December 21, 2019, with the eBook to follow on January 18, 2020.
The book was edited by CWM in coordination with the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM), and has just been published by Springer, as part of their AWM Series.
The first part of the volume starts with a short report with pictures on the activities of the first World Meeting for Women in Mathematics - (WM)2 - held in Rio de Janeiro on July 31, 2018, as a satellite event of ICM 2018. It includes a tribute to Maryam Mirzakhani. The report is followed by survey research papers from invited lecturers of the (WM)2: Monique Laurent, Alicia Dickenstein, Maria Eulália Vares and Maria J. Esteban. These articles provide panoramic views of different fields in pure and applied mathematics. The second part of the volume documents the CWM panel discussion at ICM 2018, entitled "The gender gap in mathematical and natural sciences from a historical perspective", with articles from the panelists.
The thirty-third reporting of Statistics on Women Mathematicians appeared in the October 2019 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
Margaret H. Wright of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, was awarded the
John von Neumann Prize of the Society for Industrial and
Applied Mathematics (SIAM). She was honored for her
"pioneering contributions to the numerical solution of
optimization problems and to the exposition of the subject." She delivered the Prize Lecture, titled "A Hungarian
Feast of Applied Mathematics," at the ICIAM in Valencia,
Spain, in July 2019. (From a SIAM announcement)
The Celebration of Women in Mathematics was celebrated on May 12, the birthday of Maryam Mirzakhani. There were more than 100 events, announced on https://may12.womeninmaths.org/, taking place in the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Congo, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Nepal, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Senegal, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, UK, Ukraine, and USA.
Congratulations to the U.S. team that took first place at the European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad held April 7-13, 2019 in Kyiv, Ukraine against teams from 50 countries. The 2019 U.S. team members are Emma Qin (individual gold medal), Ishika Shah (individual gold medal), Janabel Xia (individual silver medal), and Catherine Wu (individual gold medal). This is the second times in the past three years that the U.S. team came in first in the Olympiad. For more information, see the press release from the Mathematical Association of America.
Congratulations to Karen Uhlenbeck for being awarded the 2019 Abel Prize in mathematics from the Norwegian Academy of Science. She is the first woman to receive this prestigious award "for her pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory and integrable systems, and for the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics." The award ceremony will take place on May 21, 2019 in Oslo. For more information, see The Abel Prize website.
Ana Humphrey, 18, of Alexandria, Virginia, won the top award in 2019 the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors. She won for her mathematical model to determine the possible locations of exoplanets — planets outside our solar system — that may have been missed by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. For more information about her project and the Regeneron Science Talent Search, see the press release from the Society for Science and the Public.
Baylor University dedicated a new bust to commemorate Dr. Vivienne Malone-Mayes, their first African-American faculty member (hired in 1966) and the fifth African-American woman to earn a PhD in mathematics. The ceremony was broadcast live on Baylor’s Facebook page on Tuesday, February 26, 2019.
The first Meeting for women mathematicians in Portugal (WM2) will take place at Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa from 22th - 24th July 2019. The conference aims to cover, as broadly as possible, the diversity of interests of Portuguese women mathematicians. To this purpose the talks will explain the motivation of the problems discussed and focus on the main ideas. For more information, see the WM2 website.
Two new books recently (or soon to be) published: Power in Numbers: The Rebel Women of Mathematics by Talithia Williams, Race Point Publishing.
"Full-color volume that takes aim at the forgotten influence of women on the development of mathematics over the last two millennia." Women Who Count: Honoring African American Women Mathematicians by Shelly M. Jones, to be published by the AMS.
"A children’s activity book featuring the important work, accomplishments and everyday lives of African American women mathematicians including the women from the book and movie Hidden Figures."
The forthcoming book World Women in Mathematics 2018 - Proceedings of the First World Meeting for Women in Mathematics (WM)2, organized by by the Committee for Women in Mathematics (CWM) in coordination with the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM), records the first (WM)2 and the CWM panel discussion at ICM 2018. It is edited by Carolina Araujo, Georgia Benkart, Cheryl E. Praeger and Betül Tanbay, and is expected to be published in 2019 by Springer, as part of their AWM Series.
The mathematics departments at the University of Washington and the University of Montana at Missoula recently established the Gloria Hewitt Graduate Scholarship in Mathematics in honor of Gloria Hewitt, a 1961 Ph.D. graduate of the University of Washington. A special celebration was held in March 2018 by the University of Montana where Professor Hewitt taught for 38 years. The scholarships provides support for master's and doctoral students in mathematics with a preference for students from underrepresented minorities.
Congratulations to Ingrid Daubechies for winning the 2018 William Benter Prize in Applied Mathematics. She is the first female recipient of this $100,000 prize that is given to recognize outstanding mathematical contributions that have had a direct and fundamental impact on scientific, business, finance and engineering applications. For more information see the press release from the City University of Hong Kong.
Congratulations to Margaret Beck of Boston University for receiving the first AMS Joan and Joseph Birman Fellowship for Women Scholars for the 2018-2019 academic year in recognition of her exceptional research on stability problems in partial differential equations and spatially extended dynamical systems. For more information, see the news release from the American Mathematical Society.
In February 2018, women mathematicians from all over the world responded to a call for clips in which they were asked to introduce themselves. The result, a 14 minute video called "Faces of Women in Mathematics," includes 146 clips of 243 women mathematicians from 36 different countries and speaking 31 different languages. Watch the 14 minute video here. A shorter 3 minute trailer can be viewed here. Supported by the Committee for Women in Mathematics of the International Mathematical Union. For more information, see the press release.
In celebration of Women's History Month, the Notices of the American Mathematical Society and Women’s History Month guest editors Margaret A. Readdy and Christine Taylor present profiles of the first graduating class of women mathematicians from Princeton and twenty-seven contemporary women in math. Read the profiles in the March 2018 issue of the AMS Notices, Volume 65, No. 3, pages 248-303.
Report from Maria-Francoise Roy, Chair of the IMU Committee for Women in Mathematics, from the January 2018 IMU Newsletter:
The Committee for Women in Mathematics (CWM) received 55 applications for its 2018 call of which it approved 10. Most of the grants are devoted to developing regional networks for Women in Mathematics, in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Often the initiatives take the form of a meeting with both a mathematical part and a career development part. This is the case for two regional meetings of the African Women in Mathematics Association (AWMA), one taking place in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) for East Africa and one taking place in Ibadan (Nigeria) for West Africa, and also for the second Central Asia Women in Mathematics Association meeting taking place in Uzbekistan. The focus of the support given to the Indian Women in Mathematics association is for the participation of women from the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation at their meeting at Shiv Nadar University in Uttar Pradesh. The first workshop of "Women in mathematics in the Balkan region" taking place in Skopje (Macedonia) will involve several neighbouring countries. A Workshop in El Salvador (supported by the Vice Minister of Science and Technology and the ICSU Regional Office of Latin America and the Caribbean) entitled "Why Mathematics? : Encouraging girls to pursue the dream of becoming teachers or researchers in this discipline" will be focused on less developed Central American countries such as Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Panama. An activity inspired by the series of meetings "Women in ..." (see for example "Women in numbers") held at the Banff International Research station, is going to take place for the first time in South America, in Uruguay.
The African Women in Mathematics Association will also be writing portraits of African women mathematicians, both to post on AWMA website and to publish as a booklet to be used for promoting mathematics among young African women.
Two further events are taking place in Europe, an ICTP school in Trieste (Italy) on Dynamical Systems, with all female organizers and lecturers, and the European Women in Mathematics General Meeting taking place in Graz (Austria). In both cases the CWM grant will be used to support the attendance of women from developing countries.
Nouzha El Yacoubi was elected in July 2017 as President of the African Mathematical Union (AMU) for the period 2017-2021. She is the first woman in this position.
Congratulations to Maryna Viazovska of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology for having been awarded the 2017 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize. This prize, established in 2005, is This nomination is the crowning achievement of a brilliant career of research and service. In particular, Nouzha El Yacoubi had been the first woman Secretary General of AMU in 2004-2009 and she has chaired the AMU Commission on Pan African Mathematics Olympiads from 1995 to 2009.awarded annually for outstanding contributions by
young mathematicians no older than 32 to areas influenced by Srinivasa Ramanujan (who died at the age of 32). To read the prize citation, see the second page of the Mathematical People section of the January 2018 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society. Read more about her at Wikipedia.
The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) has established the AWM Fellows
Program to recognize individuals who have demonstrated
a sustained commitment to the support and advancement
of women in the mathematical sciences, consistent with
the AWM mission: "to encourage women and girls to study
and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences,
and to promote equal opportunity and the equal treatment
of women and girls in the mathematical sciences." To see the list of inaugural fellows, visit the AWM webpage on the launch of the AWM Fellows Program.
The IMU Committee for Women in Mathematics (CWM) welcomes the mathematical community to the World Meeting for Women in Mathematics - (WM)2, a satellite event of the ICM 2018. The (WM)2 will bring together mathematicians from all over the world to think about and discuss gender issues in mathematics, its challenges, initiatives, and perspectives for the future, with a strong focus on Latin America. The (WM)2 will take place at Riocentro convention center on July 31, 2018. Its program includes research talks, group discussions about gender issues in mathematics, a panel discussion and poster presentation. There will also be a tribute to Maryam Mirzakhani.
Check out the new WomenDoMath website at https://www.womendomath.org/. This NSF supported site brings "news and resources about women and other groups or individuals in mathematics that accurately represent the diversity of the math community. WDM aims to provide a central hub and resources pool within reach for women in mathematics."
Talitha Washington, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Howard University, has been appointed by the National Science Foundation as the Division of Undergraduate Education Program Director for the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education program. The goal of this program is to strengthen STEM education at two- and four-year colleges and universities by improving curricula, instruction, laboratories, infrastructure, assessment, diversity of students and faculty, and collaborations. For more information about Professor Washington, see her website at www.talithawashington.com.
Congratulations to the U.S. team of Qi Qi, Angela Deng, Wanlin Li, and Siye Zhu, who took first place at the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad held April 6-12, 2017 in Zurich, Switzerland. Each member of the team was awarded a gold medal for their individual performance. For more information, see the MAA press release. For information about the competition, including the problems, team scores, and individual scores, see theEGMO website.
Ingrid Daubechies, the James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics at Duke University, received the Math + X Investigator Award from the New York-based Simons Foundation. The $1.5 million grant will support her research between mathematics and electrical and computer engineering in the next five years. For more details, see the Duke news release and an article about her recent research projects.
Congratulations to Sara Zahedi, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockhold, Sweden, for being awarded one of ten European Mathematical Society Prizes at the 2016 European Congress of Mathematics in Berlin. The EMS Prize is awarded to young researchers not older than 35 years, of European nationality or working in Europe, in recognition of excellent contributions in mathematics. Zahedi, who works in the area of numerical analysis, was recognized for her efforts to improve computer simulations of the behavior of fluids that don't mix together. She was the only woman to win one of this year's ten prizes and just the ninth female winner in the 25 years that the prizes have been awarded. Read more about Zahedi and her work on "Blood, oil and water" in a Plus Magazine article.
At the 2016 International Congress on Mathematical Education in Hamburg, Germany, Professor Jill Adler, FRF Chair of Mathematics Education at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, received the Hans Freudenthal Medal in recognition of her outstanding research program dedicated to improving the teaching and learning of mathematics in South Africa – from her 1990s ground-breaking, sociocultural research on the inherent dilemmas of teaching mathematics in multilingual classrooms through to her subsequent focus on problems related to mathematical knowledge for teaching and mathematics teacher professional development. For more information about Professor Adler and her work in mathematics education, see the award citation from the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction.
Congratulations to Stephanie Shi-Ning Mui from Vienna, VA, for receiving the First Place Award at the 2016 intel International Science and Engineering Fair, held May 10-16, 2016, in Phoenix, AZ. Her poster was on "Embedding a Flat Torus in Three Dimensional Euclidean Space" and provided a visualization of the embedded flat torus in the three-dimensional Euclidean space using sinusoidal fractal curves.
The World Meeting for Women in Mathematics will take place in Riocentro in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the same venue as the International Congress of Mathematicians 2018, on the day preceding the Congress. This is a satellite event of the ICM 2018, organized by the IMU Committee for Women in Mathematics. It will bring together mathematicians from all over the world to think about and discuss the gender issue in mathematics and its challenges, initiatives, and perspectives for the future, with a strong focus on Latin America. It will also include invited talks by Latin American female mathematicians.
The fourth AWM Research Symposium will take place on the UCLA campus, April 8-9, 2017. The symposium will showcase the research of women in the mathematical professions. It will feature four plenary talks, special sessions on a broad range of research in pure and applied mathematics, and poster sessions for graduate students and recent Ph.D.'s. The four plenary speakers will be AWM Past President Ruth Charney, AWM Sadosky Prize Winner Svitlana Mayboroda, Blackwell-Tapia Prize Winner Mariel Vazquez and the first AWM/SIAM Sonia Kovalevsky Lecturer Linda Petzold. Deanna Haunsperger will be presented with the second AWM Presidential Award, to recognize significant contributions to advancing women in mathematics, at the Saturday evening banquet. She is receiving this award for her work with the Carleton Summer Math Program, and her ongoing mentoring of women mathematicians. Updates on the program can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/awmmath/home/RS17.
The Career Mentoring Workshop (CaMeW) for women in the mathematical sciences is a 3-day workshop for women who will finish their PhDs next year (2017). Fifteen women will be invited for this hands-on, interactive workshop. During their time there they will receive personal feedback on their application materials, give a short talk about their mathematics, and learn about various jobs and different tracks for positions in academia. They will also interact with peers from all over the country and faculty from diverse backgrounds and a variety of types of institutions. The goal with this workshop is to help women begin their postdoctoral careers in positions that fit them best. This is the 6th iteration of the workshop and will be hosted again at Wheaton College (MA) June 6-8, 2016. Applications are now being accepted, with a deadline of April 1. All accepted participants will receive full travel support and room and board for the duration of the workshop, thanks to a grant from the Luce Foundation to the EDGE Foundation and support of the President's Office at Wheaton College. Women from underrepresented minority groups are especially encouraged to apply.
Congratulations to the U.S. team that won second place at the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad in Busteni, Romania, April 10-16, 2016. Read the MAA News release. For information about the competition, including the problems, team scores, and individual scores, see the EGMO home page.
The IMU Committee for Women in Mathematics is inviting proposals for funding of up to 3000 euros for activities or
initiatives taking place in 2016 aimed at establishing or supporting
networks for women in mathematics, preferably at the continental or
regional level, and with priority given to networks and individuals in
developing or emerging countries.
Congratulations to Alicia Dickenstein, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, who was awarded the 2015 Prize in Mathematics from The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) for the Advancement of Science in Developing Countries "for her outstanding contribution to the understanding of discriminants".
"Women are as capable mathematically as men, so why aren't there more women in mathematical research? Are female mathematicians as ambitious as men? Are the accomplishments of female mathematicians as recognized as those of men? Dr Lynne Walling (Reader and Head of Pure Mathematics at University of Bristol) explores these questions in her talk "Women and Men: Ambition in an ambivalent society" at the School of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Nottingham. She also discusses barriers and discouragement women in mathematics often face, and strategies women might employ."
Watch the YouTube video.
Professor Cheryl Praeger was the 2015 inductee into the Western Australia Science Hall of Fame "for her outstanding contributions to the field and her work encouraging the involvement of women in mathematics. As Australia's most highly-cited pure mathematician many of her algorithms have been incorporated into powerful computer algebra and transformed the way in which algebra is taught and researched." See the press release from the 2015 Premier's Science Awards ceremony held on August 20, 2015.
Congratulations to Jacqueline Bredenberg who is only the second female to win Gold #1 designation in the 58 years of the Michigan Math Prize Competition. She actually placed Gold #1 in each of the past two competitions. The previous Gold #1 female winner did so in 1991. Jackie will begin studies in computer science at MIT this coming fall. For more information see the Detroit News article from July 12.
Congratulations to Celine Liang (Saratoga High School, Saratoga, CA) and Danielle Wang (Andrew Hill High School, San Jose, CA) for being two of the twelve winners of the 2015 USA Mathematical Olympiad. Liang and Wang also represented the United States at the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad in Minsk, Belarus, in April 2015 (see item below). They are shown here with Dr. John Holdren, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, during the celebration for the winners at the U.S. State Department in Washington, DC., on June 2.
The 150th anniversary of the London Mathematical Society Women in Maths four day conference was written up in Plus online magazine! See
https://plus.maths.org/content/it-all-adds.
In March 2015 the newly-elected IMU Executive Committee, at its
meeting in Berlin, decided to establish a new Committee for Women in
Mathematics (CWM) to
promote international contacts between national and regional
organizations for women in mathematical sciences; maintain up-to-date
content on the Committee for Women in Mathematics part of the IMU
website and, with appropriate assistance from the IMU, to ensure its
technical development; consider how best to facilitate electronic
communications among the community of women mathematicians
internationally; work with groups, committees and commissions of
IMU on topics pertaining to women mathematicians and their
representation;
publicise, and where needed to suggest, working practices that ensure
equal opportunities for women mathematicians in universities and
research institutions, for example appropriate funding arrangements,
family friendly policies and facilities; report annually to the IMU
Executive Committee and to propose actions that would lead to an
improvement in the position women in the mathematical community and to
an increase in the representation of women in mathematics at all levels. Website: http://www.mathunion.org/cwm
Professor Bin Yu from the University of California, Berkeley, has been named the 2016 Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) Rietz Lecturer. She gave her lecture at the World Congress of Probability and Statistics, July 11‐15, 2016, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Rietz Lecturer is chosen every three years by the IMS Committee on Special Lectures. It is one of the highest academic honors bestowed by the IMS.
The African Mathematical Union Commission for Women and Mathematics in
Africa (AMUCWMA) 2015 Conference / Workshop took place at Bandari
College in Mombasa, Kenya from July 16-18, 2015. The theme of
the conference/workshop is "Women in Mathematics for Social Change and
Sustainable Livelihoods". The conference is supported by CIMPA and is
intended for African women mathematicians and women postgraduate
students in Mathematical Sciences in Africa.
For detailed information, contact Prof. Marie Françoise Ouedraogo, President of the AMUCWMA (omfrancoise@yahoo.fr).
The fourth European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad took place in Minsk, Belarus, April 14-20, 2015. The competition, inspired by the China Girls' Math Olympiad, is similar in style to the International Mathematical Olympiad, with two tests taken on consecutive days. Participating countries send teams consisting of their strongest four high-school-age, female mathematicians. The girls who represented the United States, Meghal Gupta, Celine Liang, Danielle Wang, and Rachelle Zhang, took second place with three gold medals and one silver medal.
The AWM Research Symposium 2015 was held at the University of Maryland, College Park, April 11-12, 2015. It featured four plenary talks by Maria Chudnovsky, Ingrid Daubechies, Jill Pipher, and Katrin Wehrheim, as well as 14 special sessions on a wide range of topics in pure and applied mathematics, poster sessions for graduate students and recent PhDs, networking events, a jobs panel, and a banquet. For more information, see the Symposium website.
The 2015 Class of the Fellows of the American Mathematical Society includes seven women among the total of 63 Fellows. They are Kristin Lauter, Gordana Matic, Irina Mitrea, Andrea Nahmod, Brooke Shipley, Christina Sormani, and Irena Lasiecka. See the complete list from the AMS.
Sylvia Bozeman and Rhonda Hughes, founders of the EDGE program, were presented with a Presidential Award from the Association for Women in Mathematics at the AWM Research Symposium 2015, held at the University of Maryland on April 11-12, 2015.
The International Congress of Women Mathematicians 2014 (ICWM 2014)
was successfully held on August 12 and 14, 2014, in Seoul, Korea with
over 500 attendees representing more than 50 countries. Information about ICWM 2014 including the program book and the photos
of the attendees of the meeting can be found on the website
http://www.icwm2014.org.
Congratulations to Maryam Mirzakhani, Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University, for becoming the first woman to win a Fields Medal!
In March 2013 the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) approved the
establishment of an Advisory Group for Women in Mathematics, charged
with creating and overseeing a section of the IMU website entitled
Women in Mathematics (WiM). Opportunities for women vary widely from
country to country and a main aim is to enhance the participation of
women in all mathematical communities. The new WiM site
launched at the International Congress of Women Mathematicians
on August 12, 2014, just prior to the International Congress of Mathematics, at the
address http://www.mathunion.org/wim/. The site includes information about organizations, people, events, resources and initiatives of interest to women mathematicians world-wide.
Registration for the Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics begins on October 1. The Conference from January 23-25, 2015, is open to outstanding undergraduate women mathematicians at all stages of their careers. Students will have the opportunity to meet other women who share their interest in the mathematical sciences, and those who have already done research will be given an opportunity to present their results. Plenary Speakers will be Dr. Maria Klawe (President, Harvey Mudd College) and Dr. Karen E. Smith (Keeler Professor of Mathematics, University of Michigan).
The Advantage Testing Foundation sponsors an annual math competition for high-school girls, the largest monetary math prize for girls in the world. Their goal is to encourage young women with exceptional potential to become the mathematical and scientific leaders of tomorrow. Their next contest will be held on Saturday, September 27, 2014, at MIT. The application deadline is June 30. For more information, see the Math Prize for Girls website.
The International Congress of Women Mathematicians 2014 will take place in Seoul, Korea, on August 12 and August 14, 2014. The
purpose of the ICWM 2014 is to bring together women mathematicians and
supporters of women in mathematical sciences from around the world to
showcase the mathematical contributions of women, to exchange ideas
about supporting and encouraging active careers for women in the
mathematical sciences, and to provide opportunity for young women
mathematicians, to meet and talk with women in the mathematical
sciences from around the world. The ICWM is held in conjunction with the 27th International Congress of Mathematicians. For more information and registration, see the ICWM2014 website.
The Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics received the 2013 "Mathematics Programs that Make a Difference Award" from the American Mathematical Society. The award recognizes the annual conference organized by the mathematics department at the University of Nebraska for its significant efforts to encourage women to continue in the study of mathematics. For more information, see the article in the May 2013 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
Congratulations to University of Michigan statistician Susan Murphy who is among the 24 recipients of the MacArthur Foundation's 2013 "genius grants." Murphy develops "new methodologies to evaluate courses of treatment for individuals coping with chronic or relapsing disorders such as depression or substance abuse". She received a B.S. (1980) from Louisiana State University and a Ph.D. (1989) from the University of North Carolina. For more information, see her Profile at the MacArthur Foundation website.
The Working Committee for Women in Mathematics, Chinese Mathematical Society (WCWM-CMS) was founded in October 2012. Its present chair is Xing Li, Ningxia University. As one of the branches of the Chinese Mathematical Society (CMS), this committee is a national non-profit academic organization in which women mathematicians who are engaged in research, teaching and applications of mathematics can share their scientific research through academic exchanges both in China and abroad, and let their voice be heard by the world not only as scholars but also as women.
NIMBioS will be live streaming portions of the NSF Math Institutes Workshop "Spring Opportunities Workshop for Women in the Mathematical Sciences", which begins April 9th. The program will feature talks by women mathematicians, panels, tips for women to thrive in their mathematics careers. The target audience is graduate students and early career PhD's in all areas of mathematical sciences. To log in and view the live stream, see: http://www.nimbios.org/education/WS_opportunities.
The Spring Opportunities Workshop for Women in the Mathematical Sciences will be held April 9-11, 2014 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. This workshop will familiarize women in the mathematical sciences with professional opportunities in academics, industry and government labs and help them thrive in mathematics-related fields. Speakers, panelists and discussion leaders will be women in research and management positions in industry and government labs as well as women in academia. Application deadline is January 20, 2014. For more information, click here.
The 16th Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics will be January 31-February 2, 2014. The bulk of the program will be talks given by the undergrads on their own research; there will also be a poster session for students who prefer to present their work that way. In addition, two leading mathematicians, Cynthia A. Phillips (Sandia Labs) and Gigliola Staffilani (MIT), will give plenary addresses and the organizers expect to have representatives from the National Science Foundation, the National Security Agency, and women mathematicians who have pursued a range of careers, both in and out of academia. There will be several panel discussions on topics such as graduate school and careers in mathematics, as well as break-out group discussions. Registration opens on October 2, 2013 for presenters and October 9 for non-presenters.
Two high school girls with projects in mathematics finished among the top 10 finalists in the 2013 Intel Science Talent Search. Hannah Kerner Larson of Eugene, Oregon, won fourth place and $40,000 for her research on "mathematical structures important in theoretical physics and computer science," specifically, fusion categories. Sahana Vasudevan, of Palo Alto, Calif. won tenth place and $20,000 for a project that minimized carries and could lead to faster computer algorithms. Read the article from Science News for more information about the female student who won the $100,000 grand-prize.
Ingrid Daubechies, the James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics at Duke University, was one of two recipients of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences for 2012. She was cited for her work on wavelets "which has strongly influenced diverse fields of application ranging from data compression to pattern recognition." For more information, see the AMS Notices article.
Eva Viehmann of the Technical University of Munich was awarded the 2012 von Kaven Award in mathematics "in recognition of her outstanding research in the field of arithmetic algebraic geometry." Melania Alvarez of the University of British Columbia and the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences received the 2012 Adrien Pouliot Award of the Canadian Mathematical Society in recognition of her contributions to mathematics education in Canada. For more information about both women, see the December 2012 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
Maria Chudnovsky, associate professor in the department of industrial engineering and operations research at Columbia University, has been named a 2012 MacArthur Fellow (also know as the "genius award") for her work on the classifications and properties of graphs. Chudnovsky earned her Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 2003. For more information about her fundamental work in graph theory and a video interview, see the MacArthur Foundation website or read the article about her in the January 2013 issue of the AMS Notices.
The Association for Women in Mathematics has begun a new prize initiative to highlight outstanding research by women in the early stages of their careers in mathematics. Two prizes have recently been announced: The AWM-Microsoft Research Prize in Algebra and Number Theory and the AWM-Sadosky Research Prize in Analysis. Both prizes will be given for the first time at the AWM Reception at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore, MD in January 2014. For more information, see the article by Ruth Charney in the January 2013 issue of the AMS Notices.
Congratulations to the eight young women on the U.S. team that competed at the 11th annual China Girls Mathematical Olympiad (CGMO) in August, 2012. Among the eight high school and middle school girls on the U.S. team, three students—including one who achieved a perfect score—won gold medals, four students won silver medals, and one student was awarded a bronze medal. The girls-only international competition was held in Guangzhou, the third largest city in China, in southern China’s Guangdong Province. Gold medals were awarded to Victoria Xia, 16, from Vienna, Virginia—she received a perfect score and won her second consecutive gold medal—who will be a junior at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology; Danielle Wang, 15, from Campbell, California, a sophomore at Westmont High School, who also won a gold medal last year; Alicia Weng, 16, from West Hills, California, who will be a junior at North Hollywood High School. Silver medals were won by Cynthia Day, 17, from San Jose, California, who recently graduated from Lynbrook High School and will be a freshman at Stanford University this fall, she was also a medalist at the 2009 and 2010 CGMO; Courtney Guo, 16, a U.S. citizen who is a junior at the International School of Beijing in China; Laura Pierson, 12, from Oakland, California, who is the youngest student to ever compete on the U.S. team, she will be a seventh grader this fall at Hillcrest Middle School; and Jingyi Zhao, 16, from Culver, Indiana, who will be a junior this fall at Culver Academies. A bronze medal was awarded to Gabriella Studt, 16, from Silver Spring, Maryland, who begins her junior year at Montgomery Blair High School.
See the eight-question test that the team took during the two four-hour sessions.
Ingrid Daubechies has been awarded the 2012 Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics, one of the largest monetary awards in the United States honoring outstanding achievements in mathematics. She was recognized "for her numerous and lasting contributions to applied and computational analysis and for the remarkable impact her work has had across engineering and the sciences." For more information, see the announcement in the August 2012 Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
Cheryl Praeger has been elected as Vice President of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction at its July 2012 General Assembly in Seoul, South Korea. The ICMI was founded in 1908 to foster efforts to improve worldwide the quality of mathematics teaching and learning.
Sarah Hermann, Julia Huang, Danielle Wang, and Victoria Xia represented the United States in the first European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad at Murray Edwards College in England, April 12-13, 2012, with the team coming in 4th among the 19 countries participating. Danielle and Victoria won gold medals while Sarah and Julia won bronze medals. For more details, see the EGMO website.
Lisa Sauermann, a resident of Germany, is ranked No. 1 in the International Mathematical Olympiad Hall of Fame, having won four gold medals (2008-2011) and one silver medal (2007) in this international mathematics competition. She received a perfect score of 42 on the 2011 exam, the only participant to do. She is currently a student at the University of Bonn.
For the sixth year in a row the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute will be sending eight of the brightest young women in mathematics to participate in the 2012 China Girls Mathematical Olympiad. The competition was originally established as a regional competition for teams of female high school students from China and other eastern Asian countries (including Russia). Several years ago China expanded the competition to countries from around the world, with the USA, Canada, South Africa, and Australia among the invitees. The team will spend three weeks preparing for the competition at the Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program offered by the Mathematical Association of America on the campus of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. The Olympiad will be held from August 8-12 in Guangzhou in the Guangdong Province. The members of the USA team are Courtney Guo, Laura Pierson, Gabriella Studt, Alicia Weng, Jingyi Zhao, Cynthia Day, Danielle Wang, and Victoria Xia. For details, see the press release from MSIR.
The Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University will present a Program for Women and Mathematics on 21st-Century Geometry from May 14 to May 25, 2012. The program will bring together research mathematicians and women undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral scholars for an intensive workshop held on the campus of the Institute for Advanced Study. For an application (due Feb. 20, 2012) and more information, go to www.math.ias.edu/wam.
Rebecca Burks, Christina Chen, Sarah Herrmann, Elaine Hou, Julia Huang, Danielle Wang, Tiffany Wu and Victoria Xia, members of the United States team at the 2011 China Girls Math Olympiad, all won medals at the competition held July 28 - August 3 in Shenzhen, China. Wang and Xia each won gold medals, while a silver medal was awarded to Huang. The remaining team members each won bronze medals. The tenth annual Olympiad drew 192 girls from countries such as Japan, Russia, the United States, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and China. For more information read the MSRI press release.
Shijie (Joy) Zheng, a member of the class of 2011 at Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH, is the only girl among the twelve winners of the 40th U.S.A. Mathematical Olympiad. The USAMO is a six-question, two-day, nine-hour essay/proof examination with problems requiring pre-calculus methods to be solved. Joy also won the The Wendy Ravech-Akamai Mathematics Scholar Award, presented for the first time at the Mathematical Olympiad Awards Ceremony that took place on June 6 at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. She received a gold medal for the U.S. team at the 2010 China Girls Mathematics Olympiad. For information about the USAMO winners, see the press release from the Mathematical Association of America.
Legacy of Light is an award winning play by playwright Karen Zacarias that features Emilie du Châtelet as one of the characters. The play intertwines the stories of Châtelet and Voltaire with that of a modern day couple where the wife, an astrophysicist, is struggling to balance a yearning for science with the emotional pull towards having a child. Parts of the play describe Chatelet's mathematical interests. Look for a production at a local playhouse.
The 14th Annual Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics will be held January 27-29, 2012. This is a national showcase for research of undergraduate women in the mathematical sciences. Plenary speakers will be Sara Billey from the University of Washington and Ingrid Daubechies from Duke University. The conference will also include talks and posters by undergraduate women and panel discussions on careers using mathematics and choosing a mathematics graduate program. Registration opens October 10.
The Association for Women in Mathematics is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2011! In September the AWM held its "40 Years and Counting: AWM's Celebration of Women in Mathematics" at Brown University in Providence, RI. For more information about AWM anniversary events, visit the AWM website.
George Csicery's film Julia Robinson and Hilbert's Tenth Problem will be shown on public television stations via syndication by American Public Television beginning on October 2, 2011. This one-hour biographical documentary tells the story of Julia Robinson, an important American mathematician, against a background of mathematical ideas. For scheduled airdates, click here.
Irena Lasiecka, professor of mathematics at the University of Virginia, has been awarded the 2011 W.T. and Idalia Reid Prize, one of the top international prizes in the field of differential equations and control theory. She is the first woman to receive the prize since its inception in 1994 by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Professor Lasiecka earned her Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Warsaw in 1975. For more information see the University of Virginia press release. [Update: In 2012, Ruth F. Curtain of the University of Groningen in The Netherlands received the 2012 W.T. and Idalia Reid Prize.
"In 1942, when computers were human and women were underestimated, a group of female mathematicians helped win a war and usher in the modern computer age. Sixty-five years later their story has finally been told." The new documentary "Top Secret Rosies: The female computers of World War II," is available on some public television stations through American Public Television, Inc. Included are the stories of Doris Polksy, her sister Shirley Melvin, Marlyn Meltzer, and Betty Jean Bartik -- four of the 100 women recruited by the U.S. Army to do calculations and ballistics work.
Maria Monks is one of fourteen Churchill Scholars for 2010-2011. Maria received her BS degree in mathematics from MIT, with a minor in physics and a concentration in music. She was the recipient of the 2009 Alice T. Schafer Prize from the Association for Women in Mathematics and is already the single or joint author on five mathematical papers. Maria was also on the MIT Varsity Cross-Country team for four years, earning Most Valuable Player in 2006 and 2007. After her year at Cambridge University she will begin graduate studies in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. For more information about Maria, read the MITnews press release.
Of the eight high school girls who participated on the two U.S. teams at the 2010 China Girls Mathematical Olympiad, seven students won top honors with five gold medals, one silver medal, one bronze medal, and one honorable mention. One of the two U.S. teams placed second overall behind a team from China. There were 48 teams of girls from about ten countries throughout the world. The competition was originally established as a regional competition for teams of female high school students from China and other eastern Asian countries (including Russia). Several years ago China expanded the competition to countries from around the world, with the USA, Canada, South Africa, and Australia among the invitees.
Oscar winner filmmaker Alejandro Amenabar (of The Others) is the writer and director for a new movie called Agora, a historical drama set in early Egypt. According to one reviewer, "The film focuses on one of the most impressive female figures in history – Hypatia, a leading thinker in the Rome-governed Alexandria, considered to be the first notable woman of mathematics. She studied philosophy and astronomy, and both pagan and Christian students from far and wide came together to study under her." Oscar-winning actress Rachel Wiesz plays Hypatia, who "fights to save the collected wisdom of the ancient world." The film has recently been released to American theaters. For more information and links to trailers, see the IMDb website.
The International Conference of Women Mathematicians (ICWM) 2010 took place in Hyderabad, India, on August 17 and 18, 2010, over the two days immediately before the 2010 International Congress of Mathematicians. The meeting was aimed principally at women mathematicians attending the ICM (though men were also very welcome to attend), and in particular at young women mathematicians and women from Asia and from developing countries. An August 18, 2010 blog posting from PLUS Magazine features a story about the conference and a podcast with conference delegates. More Information.
The Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics will be held January 28-30, 2011. The Conference is open to outstanding undergraduate women mathematicians at all stages of their careers. The bulk of the program will be talks given by the undergrads on their own research; there will also be a poster session for students who prefer to present their work that way. In addition, Fan Chung and Linda Petzold will give plenary lectures and there will be representatives from the National Science Foundation and the National Security Agency, in addition to women mathematicians who have pursued a range of careers, both in and out of academia. There will be several panel discussions on topics such as graduate school, summer activities, and careers in mathematics, as well as break-out group discussions.
The first six programmers of the first electronic, digital, general-purpose computer, ENIAC, were all women, four of whom had majored in mathematics in college. The profiles of these women — Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Jean Jennings Bartik, Frances Snyder Holberton, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Frances Bilas Spence, and Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum — can be found on the website at the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame, along with links to additional information about the women and a video from their induction in the Hall of Fame. Each woman also has an entry on Wikipedia.
Kate Alexandra Geschwind (Mayo High School, Rochester, MN, "Explaining Wind Farm Output Using Regression Analysis"), Almas Abdulla (West Shore Junior/Senior High School, Melbourne, FL, "Universal Law for the Distribution of Odd Periodic Cycles within Chaos in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems: A Fine Classification of Odd Cycles (Year III)"), and Evgeniia Iskanderovna Alekseeva (GOU Lyceum "Vtoraiia shkola", Moscow, Russia, "Hyperbolic Triangles of the Maximum Area and Two Fixed Sides") were Third Place Menger Award winners at the 2010 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in San Jose, California. For more information, see the news release from the American Mathematical Society.
Erika DeBenedictis, 18, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, won the top award of $100,000 in the Intel Science Talent Search 2010 for her project developing a software navigation system to help improve spacecraft travel through the solar system. Erika's research found that the gravity and movement of planets create "easy transit routes," which will ultimately help spacecraft move faster and with less fuel. She will be attending the California Institute of Technology starting in fall 2010. Watch a YouTube video of Erika describing her research project and its applications.
Lynnelle Ye, 18, from Palo Alto, California, received a $40,000 award for her fourth place project that provided strategies for winning at a computer game titled "Graph Chomp." Katherine Rudolph, 18, of Naperville, Illinois, received a $20,000 award for her eighth place math project that investigated dense packing of identical spheres, the results of which can be used in fields from chemistry to cryptology.
Kirsten Wickelgren and Melanie Matchett Wood have been selected as this year's Five-Year fellows of the American Institute of Mathematics. Wickelgren received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and her PhD at Stanford. She will use her fellowship to continue her research at Harvard. Wood, a graduate of Duke University with a Master's degree from Cambridge University and a PhD from Princeton, will work at Stanford University. For more information, see the announcement from the AIM or the Autumn 2009 AIM Newsletter (pages 4-5).
The 2009 Felix Klein Medal was awarded to Gilah C. Leder from La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia, in recognition of her more than thirty years of sustained, consistent, and outstanding lifetime achievements in mathematics education research and development. This award is named for Felix Klein, the first president of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction. For more information about Professor Leder, see the
citation from the ICMI.
The seven members of the USA team for the 2009 China Girls Math Olympiad, held August 11-16 in Xiamen, Fujian Province, China, all won metals. Pictured in the front row, from left to right: Carolyn Kim, Patricia Li, Jing-Jing (Shiyu) Li, Joy Zheng, Cynthia Day, Ramya Rangan, and Elizabeth Synge; behind the team in the second row are the teams' coaches: Jennifer Iglesias (a member of the US CGMO team in 2007 and 2008) and Zuming Feng, of Phillips Exeter Academy and academic director of the USAMO Summer Program since 2003. Shiyu Li and Joy Zheng each received a Gold medal, while the other five received either a Silver or Bronze medal (for the full results, see the MSRI press release).
"An analysis of contemporary data has provided new evidence discrediting the notion that females are innately less capable than males at doing mathematics, especially at the highest level." Read more about the report from Janet E. Mertz and Janet S. Hyde of the University of Wisconsin-Madison at the MAA news website.
On May 1, 2009, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematicians (SIAM) announced the inauguration of the SIAM Fellows Program to recognize members of SIAM distinguished for their outstanding contributions to the fields of applied mathematics and computational science. Included among the 163 initial members of the SIAM Fellows Class of 2009 are Ingrid Daubechies, Irene Fonseca, Nancy Kopell, Cathleen Morawetz, and Margaret Wright. For additional information, see the SIAM Fellows Program website.
From Plus online magazine: "Victoria Gould has led unusual parallel careers: not only has she been a successful actor, she is also a mathematician, working first as a researcher and now as a teacher and communicator of maths. Recently she helped develop theatre company Complicite's production 'A disappearing number', which perfectly brought together the mathematical and theatrical sides of her life. We talk to Victoria about her life in mathematics, and her life in theatre, and how the two work together." Read the interview in the December 2008 issue.
Alison Miller, a co-winner of the 2008 Alice T. Schafer Prize for Excellence in Mathematics from the Association for Women in Mathematics, was awarded a Churchill Scholarship to study at Cambridge University. Alison received her B.A. degree with Highest Honors in Mathematics from Harvard in 2008. She already has a mathematics research paper published in the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society. In 2004 she became the first girl to win a gold medal for the USA at the International Mathematical Olympiad. She was also a twice winner of the USA Mathematics Olympiad and twice won the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize as the top female college student in the Putnam Mathematics Competition. After her year at Cambridge, she will enter the Ph.D. program in mathematics at Princeton. Read the citation for Alison's Schafer Prize at the AWM website.
Sana Raoof, a senior at Jericho High School, Jericho, NY, received a 2008 Intel Young Scientist Award and a $50,000 scholarship from the Intel Foundation for her mathematics project on "Computation of the Alexander-Conway Polynomial on the Chord Diagrams of Singular Knots." She used mathematical knot theory to investigate and solve problems in biochemistry. Read about Sana in an article from the Rediff India Abroad, and listen to Sana explain her project at YouTube.
The U.S. team won two gold, one silver, and five bronze medals at the 2008 China Girls Math Olympiad, led by Lynnelle Ye with a score of 87.
On Friday, September 21, 2007, the NPR show "Science Friday" featured a story on "Girls, Women, and Math." The second hour of the show featured a segment on the eight high school girls who represented the US at the China Girls Mathematical Olympiad (see next item). Guests included team member Jennifer Iglesias and one of the team coaches, Melanie Wood. Also appearing on the show was Dr. Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College and a Ph.D. mathematician, and actress Danica McKellar. For more information on both women, see the entries below. Information about the NRP show and podcasts of the show are available at www.sciencefriday.com.
Sherry Gong, a 12th grader at the Phillip Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H., earned a gold medal and tied for first place at the 2007 China Mathematical Olympiad for Girls, held in Wuhan, China, August 11-16, 2007. Sherry had previously tied for second in the 2007 USA Mathematical Olympiad where she was the only girl among the top twelve winners. After a second rigorous team selection test, she was one of six members chosen to represent the United States at the 2007 International Mathematics Olympiad in Hanoi, Vietnam, July 19-30, 2007. Sherry was a member of two previous International Mathematics Olympiad teams when she competed with the 2005 U.S. team and the 2004 Puerto Rican team. For more details about the 2007 Olympiad, see the story at MAA Online. Read more about Sherry Gong when she was named the 2005 Clay Olympiad Scholar in recognition of the most original solution to a problem on the 2005 USA Mathematics Olympiad.
The actress Danica McKellar, perhaps better known as Winnie from The Wonder Years, has written a math book for middle school girls called "Math Doesn't Suck". Danica
graduated with highest honors from UCLA with a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics, and is the co-author of a mathematical research paper published in the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General. Her accomplishments in mathematics have been profiled in the New York Times, July 19, 2005 (section F). Listen to her February 11, 2006, interview on NRP Weekend Edition in which she discusses this paper.
In 1998 Melanie Wood became the first high school girl ever to win a spot on the United States Mathematical Olympiad Team. Melanie was the subject of the 2007 AWM Contest Grand Prize winning essay by Leena Shah, a middle school student from Brighton, Michigan. Read Leena's essay from the AWM website. While a student at Duke University, Melanie was the first American woman, and second woman overall, to win the Putnam competition—a prestigious math competition for college students. Read her interview in Math Horizons, September 2004, or the 2003 Duke University article about her accomplishments in math.
Frances E. Allen, who earned a masters in mathematics from the University of Michigan and is currently a fellow emerita of the T. J. Watson Research Center, received the 2006 A. M. Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery for her "pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques that laid the foundation for modern optimizing compilers and automatic parallel execution." She is the first woman to be honored with the Turing Award. For more information, see the ACM link about Allen. The ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory awarded its Knuth Prize to Nancy Lynch (Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for her "influential contributions to the theory of distributed systems" and for her "seminal impact on the reliability of distributed computing systems." She is the first woman to receive the award..
Maria Klawe, who received her B.S. and PhD in mathematics from the University of Alberta, was inaugurated as the first woman President of Harvey Mudd College on February 2, 2007. For more information, see the story at MAA Online.
Ramdorai Sujatha of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research has been awarded the 2006 Srinivasa Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from Developing Countries by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) and the International Mathematical Union (IMU) for her work on the arithmetic of algebraic varieties and her contributions to noncommutative Iwasawa theory. For more information, read the article from BBC News.
Sarah Flannery gained fame when as a sixteen year old she became the winner of the 1998 Esat Young Scientist Exhibition and received both the 1999 Irish Young Scientist of the Year Award and the European Young Scientist of the Year Award for her work in the development of the Cayley-Purser algorithm in cryptography. In 2002 Sarah wrote a book called In Code: A Mathematical Journey about public-key cryptography, her work in developing this algorithm, and her enjoyment in solving mathematical puzzles. In 2003 she graduated from Peterhouse College of the University of Cambridge with a BA degree in computer science, went to work for Wolfram Research, and now works for Electronic Arts, a leading video game developer and publisher. Read a review of Sarah's book from the 2003 Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
On May 23, 2006, the Swedish mathematician Lennart Carleson received the Abel Prize for 2006 from the Queen of Norway. The next day Carleson presented his Abel Lecture. Three other prominent mathematicians were invited to give lectures in honor of the Abel Laureate. Two of these were Lai-Sang Young from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, who spoke on "A mathematical theory of strange attractors," and Sun-Yang Alice Chang from Princeton University, who spoke on "Conformal invariants and differential equations."
The TV show The Simpsons often contains references to mathematics. A show called Girls Just Want to Have Sums aired on Sunday, April 30, 2006, and explored the topic of women in mathematics.
