Alice's Adventures in Numberland

     Recently I was alerted to some postings by Alice Silverberg -- she is a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of California at Irvine and she is has made outstanding contributions to the field of Cryptography.  AND Silverberg has recently written down (at this link) some of her adventures as a math-woman.  She has entitled them "Alice's Adventures in Numberland" and she offers an email address for readers' comments.  ALSO here are links to two of my earlier postings featuring Alice Silverberg and poetry:  "A Quantum Romance" by Adam Rulli-Gibbs and several syllable snowballs.

As a recent film featuring NASA mathematician, Katherine Johnson, 

points out, math-women often are:

Hidden figures:

women no one

notices are

changing the world.

 Although not mathematical, "Diving into the Wreck" 

by Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) also is relevant here.

      Here is a link to an important article by Judy Green, "How Many Women Mathematicians Can You Name?"  Green, now an emeritus professor at Marymount University, opens her article (first published in Math Horizons in 2001) with the admission that until her last undergraduate semester the only female mathematician she could name is Emmy Noether.  Green's article, and a book she has co-written (with Jeanne LaDuke) and its companion website, help to remedy such situations for others.  There are many important math women to know!

     AND, if you still have time after exploring the links above, 

please visit my article (with poetry) "They Say She Was Good -- for a Woman,"

published July 2017 in the online Journal of Humanistic Mathematics.

Women in Mathematics Count!

     The theme for 2016 Mathematics Awareness Month is "The Future of Prediction."  And today I am wondering what date can be predicted for when the achievements of women in mathematics will be recognized with the same awareness as those of men.

How many female mathematicians can you name? 

Here are links to two articles to to help you lengthen your list of math-women:  "12 Brilliant Female Mathematicians You Should Know" -- an article by Olivia Harrison whose list starts with Hypatia (who lived around 400 AD) and continues to the 21st century, featuring Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian mathematician at Stanford who in 2014 won the prestigious Fields Medal for her work related to the symmetry of curved surfaces. Judy Green adds important names in her article "How Many Women Mathematicians Can You Name?"
     For still more, visit my 2015 post "The culture for women in math and the sciences";  additionally, a search of this blog using "math women" will lead to a host of  names and links.  Enjoy!
     Here are the closing lines of a poem of mine about the brilliant mathematician, Emmy Noether (1883-1935):   

           In spite of Emmy's talents,
           always there were reasons
           not to give her rank
           or permanent employment.
           She's a pacifist, a woman.
           She's a woman and a Jew.
           Her abstract thinking
           is female and abstruse.

           Today, history books proclaim that Noether
           is the greatest mathematician
           her sex has produced. They say she was good
           for a woman.

The full poem is available here.

Celebrate Math Women

     March is Women's History Month and, although this year's theme focuses on women in public service and government, my own thoughts tend toward women in mathematics.  My post on July 21, 2015 focuses on math women -- and a google search of the blog using "math women" will lead to a host of additional poems and links.  Enjoy!
     To celebrate math-women one must first be able to name them; here is a link to an important and relevant article by Judy Green, "How Many Women Mathematicians Can You Name?"

I am the girl voice,

Drafts scribed--thoughts stretched, smoothed, squared, sighed --

Catch here now my I.

    

Can mathematics maximize happiness?

     My post for last Monday (11 June 2012) offered a link I would like to repeat:  to an article by Judy Green, "How Many Women Mathematicians Can You Name?"  (first published in Math Horizons in 2001).  One of the seven names in Green's opening paragraph is "Sofia Kovalevskaia" (1850 - 1891); this prizewinning Russian mathematician (whose name appears with a variety of spellings, including "Sophia Kovalevsky" and "Sonya Kovalevskaya") was also a writer of literary work -- several novels, a play, a memoir, some poetry.  

Think Like a Man

     To publish mathematics,
     a woman must learn to think
     like a man, learn to write like
     a man, to use only her
     initials so reviewers
     guess she's a man!  Women must
     masquerade, pretend man-think --
   
     or can we build
     new attitudes,
     so all of us
     have fair chances?!        ("Square Attitudes"   by JoAnne Growney)