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.

• Names in Alphabetical Order
• Names in Chronological Order
• Interactive Timeline
• Names by Location of Birth (including a Google Map view)
• Other Resources about Women Mathematicians
• The First Ph.D's in Mathematics by Women before 1930
• Prizes, Awards and Honors for Women Mathematicians
• Birth and Death Anniversaries
• Photo Credits
• Search the site

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Did you know? (See the Archive for past announcements)

• 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.
   
• The first issue of newsletter from the International Mathematical Union Committee for Women in Mathematics is now available at https://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/CWM/Initiatives/CWMNewsletter1.pdf
   
• 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."

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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Visit the Agnes Scott College Mathematics Department website.

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