Welcome to the web site for biographies of women in mathematics. These pages are part
of an on-going project at Agnes Scott College
in Atlanta, Georgia, to
illustrate the numerous achievements of women in the field of mathematics.
Here you can find biographical essays or comments
on the
women mathematicians profiled on this site, as well as additional resources about women in mathematics. Each time this page is reloaded, a randomly selected photo is displayed to the left (if Javascript is enabled). Click on the image to go to the profile of that woman.
We also
welcome contributions of biographical information or essays from those outside Agnes
Scott College. If you are interested in contributing an essay, please send your
contribution to the email address below. Comments, suggestions, or
corrections can also be sent to this address.
Did you know?
- "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 Mathematical Sciences Digital Library.
- 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.
- 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 the TimesofMalta.com website, "Oscar-winning actress Rachel Wiesz plays astrologer-philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria who fights to save the collected wisdom of the ancient world." The film is expected to be released in December 2009.
- 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. For more information about the Girls Math Olympiad and comments from the U.S. participants, visit http://www.msri.org/specials/gmo/2008.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 more about Sana Raoof in the May 17, 2008, Newsday article.
- 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". Read the Newsweek article in the August 6, 2007, issue. 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. Or visit the mathematics link on her website to read about her interest in mathematics.
- 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 press release or the links 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. See the ACM press release.
- 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 press release or an article from the 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." Read more about the 2006 Abel Prize.
- 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. See Dr. Sarah Greenwald's SimpsonsMath website at Appalachian State University for more details including a link to an interview with one of the writers for this episode.
AWM Biographies Contest
To increase awareness of women's ongoing contributions to the mathematical
sciences, the Association for Women in Mathematics sponsors an essay
contest for biographies of contemporary women mathematicians and
statisticians in academic, industrial, and government careers. This
contest is open to students in the following categories: Grades 6-8,
Grades 9-12, and College Undergraduate. At least one winning submission will be chosen from each category. Winners will receive a prize, and their essays will be published online at the AWM website. Additionally, a grand prize winner will have his or her submission published in the AWM Newsletter. For more information and to see the results of past Essay Contests, go to https://awm-math.org/awards/student-essay-contest/.
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