Celebrate Vera Rubin -- a WOMAN of science!

     This morning's Washington Post carried an obituary of Vera Rubin (1928-2016),  a pioneering astronomer who confirmed the existence of dark matter.  Yesterday's NPR feature -- noting Rubin's death and celebrating her life -- contained several quotes from this outstanding scientist about women's roles.  Two of these poetic statements I have shaped into syllable-square stanzas:

World wide, half

of    all    brains

are    women's. 

Sex, Maths, and the Brain

I found this poetry in an abstract (with a link posted at "Women in Maths" on Facebook) for a lecture by Professor Gina Rippon entitled "Sex, Maths, and the Brain" at Aston University in Birmingham, England, on 30 June 2015.  Enjoy!

Is there such a thing as a maths 
brain? Are mathematicians born 
or made?  Is the lack of girls 
in maths subjects 
a 'brain' problem?

The mathematician, she . . . .

     Tomorrow, March 8, is the International Day of the Woman -- and I celebrate the day with mixed feelings.  YES, there are many women I want to celebrate. BUT WHY are they not celebrated daily, equally with men? And a more specific concern, WHY, when the word "mathematician" is used, is the person assumed to be a man. (There is, on the other hand, a nice non-gendered neutrality in numbers -- as in this first stanza of "Numbers," by Mary Cornish, found below.)
      In this posting I celebrate Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (1906-1992) -- a mathematician with a doctorate from Yale, a navy admiral, a computer scientist who led in the development of COBOL, an early (c.1959) programming language.  A person I had the good fortune to meet when she visited Bloomsburg University in 1984 to receive an honorary Doctor of Science Degree.  Hopper was imaginative and articulate; here is some poetry found in her words.

                               If it's a 
                               good idea,
                               do it.  

Number theory is like poetry

     Austrian-born Olga Taussky-Todd (1906-1995) was a noted and prolific mathematician who left her homeland for London in 1935 and moved on to California in 1945. Her best-known work was in the field of matrix theory (in England during World War II she started to use matrices to analyze vibrations of airplanes) and she also made important contributions to number theory. In the math-poetry anthology, Against Infinity, I found a poem by this outstanding mathematician.  

Phenomenal Woman

Yesterday morning Maya Angelou (1928-2014) left us. But she has not left us alone.  Her voice is with us, cheering us to be more than we were, to be all that we can become.  Places to read her words and words about her include PoetryFoundation.org (scroll down past the bio for links to poems), Poets.org, The Washington Post, and Angelou's website.

Angelou's poetry is filled with the geometry and motion of womanhood.  For example: 

A poetry album by Lucille Clifton

March is Women's History Month and here, today, I celebrate by acknowledging a special woman, Lucille Clifton (1936-2010).  From 1979–1985 Clifton served as Poet Laureate of Maryland.  Her poetry celebrates both her African-American heritage and her womanhood.  Here is "album," a poem in Clifton's spare and un-capitalized style -- and containing a few numbers to help us keep track of the times that are changing.

album     by Lucille Clifton

A mathematician, a poet, a woman

When I contacted University of Kansas mathematician Judith Roitman for permission to include her poem "Sixth Cosmogony" in this poetry-math blog she was quick to point out that this is not really a mathy poem. For example, the math term "differentiated" in the first stanza of the poem is not being used in its mathematical sense. However, my motivations for including the poem remain. First, and quite important: this is a poem by a mathematician who is also a woman and a poet. Second, I am interested in mathematicians' reactions to seeing math terms in non-mathematical contexts; are mathematical meanings part of what you think of any time that you hear a math term such as "differentiate" or "factor" or "commute"?

One of the best -- and a woman

Women in mathematics have not been much-written-about.  This blog has made  a few corrective efforts and more are needed. Perhaps change is beginning -- for March is Women's History Month and the 2013 theme is:

 Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination:
Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

Penn State University philosophy professor and poet Emily Grosholz uses mathematics not-infrequently in her work (for example, this posting of mine) and she has written (as I have) about discrimination suffered by mathematician Amalie "Emmy" Noether -- described by the NYTimes in a March 2012 article as "the most significant mathematician you've never heard of."  My own poem about Noether was  a poem of self-discovery in which I wrote of discrimination against her and began to see aspects of my own situation more clearly.  That poem, "My Dance Is Mathematics," appears in this blog's opening post --  on 23 March 2012.

Here, Emmy Noether is featured in Grosholz's poem, "Mind":

MathWoman Limericks

My desk dictionary describes a limerick as a nonsense poem; my own experience has found these five-line rhymes to be more often bawdy than nonsensical.  A mathematician and poet who has extended the limerick to verses about mathematics is Philadelphian and Arcadia professor, Marion Deutsche Cohen.  Downloads of mathy limericks are available at her website.  Scrolling down a bit on Cohen's page of downloads, leads to "Permission to Add" -- a collection of limericks based on mathematical ideas. Below I feature several limericks from Cohen's newest collection of limericks -- also available for download --  about women who are/were mathematicians. 

For example: 

Tomorrow in San Diego -- Math Poetry Event

If you are in San Diego tomorrow, I hope you will attend:

A Reading of Poetry with Mathematics

5 – 7 PM    Friday, January 11, 2013

Room 3, Upper Level, San Diego Convention Center  San Diego, CA
sponsored by the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

at the Joint Mathematics Meetings

Poetry reading organizers are Mark Huber, Gizem Karaali, and Sue VanHattum

An article by Charlotte Henderson about last year's reading in Boston
may be found here, 

with selected poems from that reading at this link.

If I were able to attend, I would beg the other poets there to write and publish poems about women mathematicians.  And I would read this example (a revision of a poem first posted in June 2012).

With Reason:  A Portrait      by JoAnne Growney

          Sophia Kovalevsky *    (1850-1891)

Thank you, Mary Gray

For today, Thanksgiving, I have wanted to prepare a special poetic tribute and thank-you to mathematician Mary Gray.  I have had yet not found time for complete preparation of that celebration.  But here are the opening words:  THANK YOU -- to a founder of  AWM (Association for Women in Mathematics) and a woman who has done much, much, much to further the opportunities and recognition for women in mathematics --  to Mary Gray.

An instrument in the shape of a woman

     Celebrating math-women with poetry is a project to which I devoted several postings earlier this summer -- see, for example, these June and July entries.  Moreover, I am looking for more such poems to post.  Please contact me (e-mail address is at the bottom of this blog-site) with poems about math-women that you have written or found.
      Mathematician-astronomer Caroline Herschel (1750-1848) appeared in a poem by Siv Cedering on 21 July, 2012 and here she is again, this time celebrated by Adrienne Rich (1929-2012).

More of Hypatia -- brave, smart woman

Poet and blogger Ellen Moody offers a lively and informative feature on poet Elizabeth Tollett (1694-1754); Tollett, too, wrote of forebears she admired, including Hypatia (c. 370 C. E. - 415 C.E.) -- who has been described as the first woman to make a substantial contribution to mathematics. In contrast with Anne Harding Woodworth's focus on the tortured death of Hypatia, Tollett's lines portray the struggles of her life.

    Hypatia     by Elizabeth Tollett

    What cruel laws depress the female kind,
    To humble cares and servile tasks confined!
    In gilded toys their florid bloom to spend,
    And empty glories that in age must end;
    For amorous youth to spread the artful snares,
    And by their triumphs to enlarge their cares. 

Seeking poems about math-women

In this blog I have previously posted poems that speak of the lives of these math-women:

     Sophie Germain (1776-1831)

     Florence Nightingale  (1820-1910)

     Amalie "Emmy" Noether  (1882-1935)

     Grace Murray Hopper (1906 - 1988)

And also a poem about four influential teachers of mine; three of them math-people; three of them women.

I want more poems about women in mathematics;   
send me yours (or those of others) -- 
write new ones; CELEBRATE women in mathematics:

women who are alive or ones that have passed; 

women of fame or those without; 

women out in front or those in quiet corners -- 

women we want to remember.

Sophie Germain dressed as a man to study math

One of the fine sources for biographies and other topics in the history of mathematics is MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, hosted by the University of St Andrews in Scotland.  Poet Brian McCabe cites this archive for historical information he used as background for his poems starring mathematicians -- found in his collection, Zero (Polygon, 2009).  Here is McCabe's poem for the outstanding French mathematician, Sophie Germain (1776-1831). 

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)  
 

Celebrate Emmy Noether

     On 23 March 1882 mathematician Emmy Noether (pronounced NER-ter) was born.  On 23 March 2010  I posted the first entry in this blog -- an entry that included a poem, "My Dance Is Mathematics," I wrote to honor Emmy Noether; its final stanza is offered below.  On 27 March 2012, The New York Times published an article that features Noether -- "The Mighty Mathematician You've Never Heard Of."
     Take time today to learn about and to celebrate this not-well-enough-known and immensely talented mathematician! 

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

I cannot post today without mentioning my sadness from learning of yesterday's passing of Adrienne Rich, a favorite poet who spoke eloquently and fearlessly of the struggles of women to be and to create. I am today in San Francisco visiting a daughter and her family and here, from the San Francisco Chronicle,  is a celebration of Rich's life, including the text of the poem of hers that I love most, "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers."

A mathematical woman

As in an earlier posting (20 December 2011), today's feature includes verse by Lord Byron (1788-1824). This time the source is Byron's satiric poem Don Juan. In Canto I, the poet describes Don Juan's mother, Donna Inez, as learned and "mathematical." Here are several stanzas about her -- sagely seasoned with words like "theorem," "proof," and "calculation."

Counting the women

     The stimulus for this posting appeared a few weeks ago in the Washington Post -- in an article that considers the loneliness of women in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math). 
     For me, it was never a conscious thing -- the counting.  It simply happened.  The numbers are small and you know, if you are a woman and a mathematician in a room full of mathematicians, how many women are in the room.  Any room.  It is a small counting number.  Sometimes it is 1. 

Poetry of Logical Ideas

When the NY Times failed to publish an obituary following the death of noted algebraist Amalie "Emmy" Noether, Albert Einstein corrected the omission with a letter to the editor (noting Noether's accomplishments) published on May 5, 1935. In addition to his praise for one of the most accomplished mathematicians of all time, Einstein said this of mathematics: "Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas." In the 1960s, as I climbed into the male-dominated world of mathematics, Emmy Noether was one of my heroes. Many years later I wrote this poem.