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Shakuntala Devi is often described as "India's most famous woman mathematician". Her biopic led discussion like what does a mathematician do? Is mathematics all about performing massive computations? Or is there more to it?
A 🧵on Indian women mathematicians by @kaneenikasinha
A 🧵on Indian women mathematicians by @kaneenikasinha
Recall one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century: Srinivasa Ramanujan. The image that he evokes is that of someone sitting quietly, writing complicated but beautiful equations involving many symbols in his notebooks.
But, this thread attempts to explore the different things that a mathematician does. Along the way, we highlight some exceptional Indian women mathematicians as examples. #GWOM #womeninmath @GWOMaths @AWMmath
Shakuntala Devi is often described as "India's most famous woman mathematician". Her biopic led discussion like what does a mathematician do? Is mathematics all about performing massive computations? Or is there more to it?
A 🧵on Indian women mathematicians by @kaneenikasinha
A 🧵on Indian women mathematicians by @kaneenikasinha
Recall one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century: Srinivasa Ramanujan. The image that he evokes is that of someone sitting quietly, writing complicated but beautiful equations involving many symbols in his notebooks.
But, this thread attempts to explore the different things that a mathematician does. Along the way, we highlight some exceptional Indian women mathematicians as examples. #GWOM #womeninmath @GWOMaths @AWMmath
GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: DR. FERN HUNT, born 1948. Dr. Hunt is a probability theorist and mathematical biologist who has made important contributions to our understanding of dynamical systems and mathematical modeling. She was born in 1948 to working class parents, #GWOM 1/8
who supported and encouraged her scientific and mathematical passions. With their encouragement, she became the first member of her family to graduate college. She earned AB, MS, and PhD degrees in mathematics, and worked in academia until 1993, when she left to work 2/8
in the computing and applied mathematics laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her work in dynamical systems relates to the mathematical modeling of genetic variation, patterns in bacteria, and nonlinear dynamics. The Monte Carlo method (pic) 3/8
GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: WANG ZHENYI, 1768-1797. Born at a time when Neo-Confucianism, a conservative strain of social philosophy, was ascendant, Zhenyi (Wang is the family name) had a lot of societal strictures to overcome to become a woman of mathematics and science. 1/8
She grew up in the family of a former district governor, which gave her access to a family library and let her become largely self-educated. Her need to understand on her own, without formal teachers, and the skills she developed as an autodidact allowed her to re-write and 2/8
simply dozens of mathematical proofs. She wrote primers and papers for laypeople describing mathematical and scientific ideas, including gravity and explaining why nobody falls off the Earth despite its spheroid shape. Her scientific achievements include calculating and 3/8
GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: DR. VIVIENNE MALONE-MAYES, 1932-1995. Dr. M was the fifth Black woman to earn a PhD in mathematics and the first Black faculty member of @Baylor. Both of her parents were teachers who encouraged their daughter's educational goals and nurtured #GWOM 1/8
her gifts. She graduated from a segregated high school in 1948 and went on to attend @FISK1866, where she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees. She worked at @PaulQuinnTigers, an HBCU, before applying to @Baylor, which rejected her on the basis of her race. Instead, she 2/8
attended the University of Texas, which had been desegregated by Federal law but was still unwelcoming and even hostile. She faced indignities from professors, who wouldn't enroll a Black student; and fellow students, who held meetings in segregated off-campus businesses to 3/8
GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: DR. TRACHETTE JACKSON, born 1972. Trachette Jackson was an Air Force kid, moving all over the US and the world until she was 12, when the family settled in Arizona. She spent the summer after her junior year in an ASU program for minority students, 1/7
where her talent in calculus began opening more doors for her. Jackson credits the program with providing confidence and an introduction to the world of higher education, teaching the "hidden curriculum" that first gen students so often have to figure out alone. #GWOM 2/7
She earned her undergraduate degree in mathematics from ASU, then MS and PhD degrees in mathematics from the Univ of Washington. During her studies, she became fascinated by mathematical biology and particularly the fight against cancer. Chemotherapy treatments are often able 3/7
GREAT WOMAM OF MATHEMATICS: DR. FERN HUNT, born 1948. Dr. Hunt is a probability theorist and mathematical biologist who has made important contributions to our understanding of dynamical systems and mathematical modeling. She was born in 1948 to working class parents, #GWOM 1/8
supported and encouraged her scientific and mathematical passions. With their encouragement, she became the first member of her family to graduate from college. She earned AB, MS, and a PhD in mathematics. Dr. Hunt worked in academia until 1993, when she left the academy to 2/8
work in the computing and applied mathematics laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her work in dynamical systems relates to the mathematical modeling of genetic variation, patterns in bacteria, nonlinear dynamics, and more. The Monte Carlo method 3/8
GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: DR. GLADYS MAE WEST, born 1930. Pioneer responsible for the mathematics behind GPS. Growing up in rural Virginia, she saw how hard the lives of her parents, a tobacco farm and railroad worker, respectively, were and determined to find a way 1/8 #GWOM
to access education to improve her life and the lives of her family. She graduated as high school valedictorian, an accomplishment that earned her a full scholarship to Virginia State University, an HBCU. She majored in mathematics because of its rigor and difficulty, earning 2/8
both bachelor's and master's degrees. In 1956, she began work at the Naval Surface Warfare Center. She was one of only four black employees and saw herself as holding the duty to be a role model. "Always doing things just right, to set an example for other people who were 3/8
GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: EMILIE DU CHATELET, 1706-1749. Growing up in the household of a member of French nobility gave her better access to education than was typical for women in her era. Her father arranged for the secretary of the French Academy of Science to see #GWOM 1/8
his brilliant daughter and talk to her about science, and arranged tutoring for her. This encouragement of her intellect stoked her lifelong advocacy of education for women, and it also paid huge dividends. By age 12, she was fluent in at least four languages. At age 18, she 2/8
was married to a 34-yr-old nobleman, an arrangement that was advantageous to both families. She had several children, pausing her studies, but resumed them at age 26. She studied maths from Clairaut (of Clairaut's theorem) and determined to access knowledge any way she could. 3/8
GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: DAME DR. KATHLEEN TIMPSON OLLERENSHAW, 1912-2014. Dr. O grew up in Manchester, England. She became deaf at age 8. An inspiring headmistress at the Ladybank Montessori School nurtured her interest in mathematics. #deaf #deafpride #deafHOH #GWOM 1/7
She credited her deafness with helping her find her passion so early, as mathematics is accessible to deaf and hearing alike. The headmistress gave her early training in rigor, insisting on "exactitude, formal proofs, and total accuracy at all times--with checks." She studied 2/7
maths at Somerville College in Oxford, completing her doctorate in 1945. She wrote five original mathematical papers before achieving her doctorate. She was married in 1939 to her childhood sweetheart, whose love she became certain of when he gave her his large, superior 3/7
GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: DR. HELEN QUINN, born 1943. A native of Australia, Quinn was encouraged to pursue maths by a high school teacher, but faced obstacles as a maths-loving girl in an era with limited opportunities for women. "I once walked into the engineering school 1/7
at the University of Melbourne, and one guy said, 'Look what's got in here,' and the other one says, 'You think it's real?'" Graduate school admission was tricky since women students were thought to get married and fail to finish. She was denied by Princeton, but accepted at 2/7
Stanford. She earned her PhD in 1967 and picked up where Einstein left off, working on the "holy grail of physics," the Theory of Everything. Her primary contribution has been in the arena of unifying forces (strong, weak, electromagnetic). She's the Quinn half of the Peccei- 3/7
GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: DR. EMMY NOETHER, 1882-1935. Responsible for concept of "Noetherian" mathematical objects, colleague of Einstein, genius whose work unified topology, geometry, logic, and algebra. Noether grew up in Germany in the family of a maths professor, #GWOM 1/8
though she received the traditional female education towards housewifery until age 18. Then she used her dad's connections to get permission to audit classes, the only way women could study at uni. Finally allowed to begin formal study in 1903 and awarded her PhD only 4 years 2/8
later. Despite obvious qualifications, she was not permitted to teach due to her sex. She continued to do research and substitute-taught for her dad serving as mentor to maths PhD students, and published widely in maths. In 1915, two colleagues who were working with Einstein 3/8
GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, 1820-1910. Best known as a nurse who helped take the role of nurse from a cultural caretaker to a medical profession in its own right, Florence Nightingale was also a mathematical trailblazer. She was directly responsible for 1/5
many changes in hospital care during the Crimean War. She documented the improvement in mortality rates and health outcomes caused by standardizing sanitation practices, among many other important changes that professionalized nursing. Nightingale did more than just invent 2/5
descriptive statistics. She also developed important methods for data visualization and presentation, helping make statistics accessible to a wider audience. Her polar area chart, also known as a coxcomb, was an early mathematically sound presentation of statistical data-- 3/5
