Margaret Wright
February 18, 1944 -
Margaret Wright received her B.S. in Mathematics and M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University. After several years in industry, she returned to Stanford to complete her Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1976. Her thesis was on "Numerical Methods For Nonlinearly Constrained Optimization." She remained at Stanford as a Research Associate until joining Bell Laboratories in 1988 where she was named a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff and later a Bell Labs Fellow. She served as head of the Scientific Computing Research Department from 1997-2000. In 2001 Wright became a professor of computer science and mathematics and chair of the Computer Science Department in the Courant Institute at New York University.
Wright is a well known mathematician in the fields of optimization, linear algebra, numerical and scientific computing, and scientific and engineering applications. She has written two books on optimization with P.E. Gill and W. Murray, over 40 publications, and almost 50 technical reports for Stanford and Bell Laboratories. She has also served as associate editor for five journals.
In 1995-1996, Wright served as President of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1997, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005. In 2000 she presented the AWM Noether Lecture. She received both the 2001 Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession from SIAM and the 2002 Award for Distinguished Public Service from the American Mathematical Society. The citation for the latter award noted that "Professor Wright has been active for many years in encouraging women and minority students, for example, by means of programs that brought them together with leaders and researchers from industry to discuss opportunities outside academia."
Read her profile from the 2000 AWM Emmy Noether Lecture.
Read the tribute by Michael Overton, Courant Institute, upon the election of Margaret Wright to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.
Additional information about Margaret Wright can be found at the Mathematics Career Information home page sponsored by the AMS and SIAM at the link http://www.ams.org/careers/mwright.html.
References
- Curriculum Vitae
- January 2002 Prizes and Awards Pamphlet, AMS/MAA San Diego Meeting
- Article by Margaret Wright in the AWM Newsletter, Vol. 29, No. 6 (1999), 20-21 about her career as an applied mathematician, part of the Olga Taussky Todd Celebration of Careers in Mathematics for Women. [Reprinted in Complexities: Women in Mathematics, Bettye Anne Case and Anne Leggett, Editors, Princeton University Press (2005), 240-242.]
- MathSciNet [subscription required]
- Mathematics Genealogy Project