Distinguished Women Mathematicians

prepared by:

Joseph Malkevitch
Department of Mathematics
York College (CUNY)
Jamaica, New York 11451

Email: malkevitch@york.cuny.edu

Until the 20th century relatively few women received the kind of education that created the possibility of becoming a distinguished mathematician. However, in the 20th century we have seen a flowering of talented women making important contributions to mathematics. Starting in 1980 many distinguished (living) mathematicians started to be honored by giving the Noether Lecture (in memory of Emmy Noether, who many consider the greatest of women mathematicians). Typically, this lecture is given at the Joint Mathematics Meetings sponsored by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America. The sponsor of these lectures has been the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM)

Below is a list of the Noether Lecturers, the title of the lecture given, and a "rough" indication of the area of mathematics that the lecture covered, thereby giving some hint of the primary mathematical interest of the lecturer.


(1980) F. Jessie MacWilliams, A Survey of Coding Theory (Coding Theory)

(1981) Olga Taussky-Todd, The Many Aspects of Pythagorean Triples (Number Theory)

(1982) Julia Robinson, Functional Equations in Arithmetic (Mathematical Logic)

(1983) Cathleen S. Morawetz, How Do Perturbations of the Wave Equation Work (Applied Mathematics)

(1984) Mary Ellen Rudin, Paracompactness (Topology)

(1985) Jane Cronin Scanlon, A Model of Cardiac Fiber: Problems in Singularly Perturbed Systems (Applied Mathematics)

(1986) Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat, On Partial Differential Equations of Gauge Theories and General Relativity (Mathematical Physics)

(1987) Joan S. Birman, Studying Links via Braids (Knot Theory)

(1988) Karen K. Uhlenbeck, Moment Maps in Stable Bundles: Where Analysis Algebra and Topology Meet (Analysis, Algebra, Applied Mathematics)

(1989) Mary F. Wheeler, Large Scale Modeling of Problems Arising in Flow in Porous Media (Applied Mathematics)

(1990) Bhama Srinivasan, The Invasion of Geometry into Finite Group Theory (Algebra)

(1991) Alexandra Bellow, Almost Everywhere Convergence: The Case for the Ergodic Viewpoint (Analysis)

(1992) Nancy Kopell, Oscillators and Networks of Them: Which Differences Make a Difference (Applied Mathematics)

(1993) Linda Keen, Hyperbolic Geometry and Spaces of Riemann Surfaces (Analysis, Geometry)

(1994) Ol'ga Ladyzhenskaya, On Some Evolutionary Fully Nonlinear Equations of Geometrical Nature (Applied Mathematics)

(1994) Lesley Sibner, Analysis in Gauge Theory (Mathematical Physics)

(1995) Judith Sally, Measuring Noetherian Rings (Algebra)

(1996) Olga Oleinik, On Some Homogenization Problems for Differential Operators (Analysis)

(1997) Linda Preiss Rothschild, How Do Real Manifolds Live in Complex Space (Analysis, Topology)

(1998) Dusa McDuff, Symplectic Structures - A New Approach to Geometry (Topology, Geometry)

(1998) Cathleen Synge Morawetz, Variations on Conservation Laws for the Wave Equation (Applied Mathematics)

(1999) Krystyna M. Kuperberg, Aperiodic Dynamical Systems (Analysis)

(2000) Margaret H. Wright, The Mathematics of Optimization (Operations Research)

(2001) Sun-Yung Alice Chang, Nonlinear Equations in Conformal Geometry (Analysis)

(2002) Lenore Blum, Computing Over the Reals: Where Turing Meets Newton (Complexity Theory, Analysis)

(2002) Hesheng Hu, Two Dimensional Toda Equations and Laplace Sequences of Surfaces in Projective Space (Analysis)

(2003) Jean Taylor, Five Little Crystals and How They Grew (Geometry, Crystallography)

(2004) Svetlana Katok, Symbolic Dynamics for Geodesic Flows (Analysis)

(2005) Lai-Sang Young, From Limit Cycles to Strange Attractors (Analysis)

(2006) Ingrid Daubechies, Mathematical Results and Challenges in Learning Theory (Analysis, Applied Mathematics)

(2007) Karen Vogtmann, Automorphisms of Groups, Outer Space, and Beyond (Algebra)

(2008) Audrey Terras, Fun With Zeta Functions of Graphs (Analysis)

(2009) Fan Chung Graham, New Directions in Graph Theory (Graph Theory; Discrete Mathematics)

(2010) Carolyn Gordon, You Can't Hear the Shape of a Manifold, (Analysis and Topology)

(2011) Susan Montgomery, Orthogonal Representations: From Groups to Hopf Algebras, (Algebra)

(2012) Barbara Keyfitz, Conservation Laws - Not Exactly a la Noether, (Applied Mathematics)

(2013) Raman Parimala, A Hasse principle for quadratic forms over function fields, (Algebra and Analysis)

(2014) Georgia Benkart, Walking on Graphs the Representation Theory Way, (Algebra)

(2015) Wen-Ching Winnie Li, Modular Forms for Congruence and Noncongruence Subgroups, (Number thoery)

(2016) Karen Smith, The Power of Noether's Ring Theory in Understanding Singularities of Complex Algebraic Varieties, (Algebra, Algebraic geometry)

(2017) Lisa Jeffrey, Real loci in symplectic manifolds, (Topology, Algebra)

(2018) Jill Pipher, Nonsmooth boundary value problems, (Harmonic analysis, Partial differential equations)

(2019) Bryna Kra, Dynamics of Systems with Low Complexity, (Dynamical systesm, Egodic Theory)

(2020) Birgit Speh, Branching Laws for Representations of Non Compact Orthogonal Groups, (Lie groups)