Women in Theory -- Math to Give

     The June, 2020 Conference of Women in Theory (of Computer Science) has been postponed to next year.  But these energetic mathy women got together virtually and performed a song.  I offer below the opening stanzas;  for the performance and complete lyrics, follow this link to YouTube.

      I Will Survive   (lyrics by Avi Wigderson (Princeton, IAS)

      At first I was afraid, I was petrified
      I worried I could never fit this proof on just one slide
      But then I spent so many nights 
                     thinking why it is so long
      And I grew strong
      And learned exactly what went wrong

      A problem wor-thy, of attack
      Just proves its worth by vigorously fighting back
      I should have used error correction, 
                     should have sampled yet again
      I should have stayed the course 
                     and found there is so much that I can gain
          . . .

For the YouTube version (with lyrics) of the complete song (8 stanzas), go here.

Celebrate the lives of MATH-WOMEN via POEMS!

     This week I have learned that a lovely presentation of my poem, "With Reason  A Portrait of Sophia Kovalevsky," has been published in the April 2020 issue of Mathematics Teacher.

 The Kovalevsky poem is available here-- 

please read and enjoy!

      I have found that POEMS about mathematicians not only can serve to celebrate those lives but also provide a meaningful way to introduce these important people into math classes.  Here are several links to previously posted poems that speak of the lives of math-women:

   Sophie Germain (1776-1831)                      Florence Nightingale  (1820-1910)

   Amalie "Emmy" Noether  (1882-1935)      Grace Murray Hopper (1906 - 1988)

Readers may find more poems about special people by scrolling through postings or by using a blog-SEARCH.  Names available for SEARCH may be found in this document.  And here is a link to a blog-SEARCH using the terms "math women". 

The Woman Who Bested the Men at Math

     An American Mathematical Society Page-a-Day Mathematics calendar, compiled by mathematician and free-lance writer Evelyn Lamb, has let me know today that tomorrow, April 4, marks the birthday of mathematician Philippa Garrett Fawcett (1868-1948), who became, "in 1890, the first woman to score the highest mark of all the candidates for the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge University." 
     Learn more about Philippa Fawcett at this website, "Biographies of Women Mathematicians,: --  maintained by Emeritus Professor Larry Riddle at Agnes Scott College.  Riddle's biographic sketch of Fawcett includes a poem of anonymous origin that celebrates her 1890 achievement.  Here are its opening stanzas:

She should have been on the Math Team

     National Poetry Month starts tomorrow and I hope that poetry can be a thoughtful focus for you in this time of crisis and confinement due to the coronavirus.  Join me in looking back to several previous posts of work by one of my favorite poets, Audre Lorde (1934-1992).

     "Hanging Fire"    about a girl who should have been on the Math Team
               "The Art of Response"
                         "Smelling the Wind" 

Lorde's collection, The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance, may be found and browsed here.
For lots more poems about math-girls-and-women, go here.

Learn of MATH WOMEN in POEMS!

 INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE WOMAN

Sunday, March 8, 2020

      Often it is difficult to find time for history in mathematics courses.  One rather concise way that some of us introduce math personalities into the classroom is through poetry.  Today, as part of Women's History Month, I offer links back to a sample of poems in previous postings that celebrate math-women.

Amalie "Emmy" Noether (1882–1935)
     Following stanzas about Noether's life and achievements, the poem ends with these lines:
                    Today, history books proclaim that Noether 
                    is the greatest mathematician
                    her sex has produced. They say she was good
                    for a woman. 

Welcome DIVERSITY in mathematics

     As February on the calendar brings BLACK HISTORY month and March brings WOMEN'S HISTORY month, I invite you to explore the contributions of diverse groups to mathematics.  In this blog, I celebrate links between a rainbow of math-people and poetry -- for example, in this posting, "Mathematicians are not just white dudes, (which includes links to math-poetry by Benjamin Banneker and Scott Williams). 

The world of Math Girls . . .

     This past weekend my oldest granddaughter turned sixteen -- and I intensely want every career door to be open to her and to my other granddaughters (and my grandson).  The times are changing, new doors are opening for girls and women,  Still, these syllable-square thoughts are on my mind this morning.  

     Math Girls     

          A math girl must be       
          smarter than the rest –-
          yet must be modest
          and never claiming.
          Math-World is not fair.

And here are more of my mathy-perhaps-poetic thoughts.

     When you’re a math girl you may be the only girl in the room.
          A math girl must be three times as good to be equal.   

Browse Math-Poetry Links . . .

     Today I invite you to browse -- to spend a moment reading titles, clicking on a title that intrigues you.   ENJOY!

• TITLES OF POSTS (with links)
•      January, 2020
  •     We become what we think . . .
  •     With bits of mathematics, a poem for a New Year
•      December, 2019 
  •     Poetry made visual with math terms
  •     Math-poetry in support of immigrants
  •     Counted syllables --> holiday wishes . . .
  •     Where are you from?
  •     Writing to Learn -- try Haiku        

Reaching for the stars . . . with science and poetry

     Astronomer Beatrice Muriel Hill Tinsley (1941– 1981) made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the evolution of galaxies (See, for example, Wikipedia).  California math teacher, editor and poet Carol Dorf celebrates Tinsley in the following poem. 

       Ask for a universe and what do you get?
                a Golden Shovel for Beatrice Tinsley            by Carol Dorf

       For a while scientists' proposed loopholes
       crossing the universe, wormholes a technique in
       which to traverse distance to other worlds, this

       unpleasant constraint which most reasoning
       holds us to a single solar system or may
       be, just perhaps a transit could exist  

Enrich Mathematics Classes with Poems

    In my mathematics classrooms, I have found it a challenge to include the history and spirit of mathematics -- and its people -- along with the math topics to be covered.  Because I love poetry -- and also write some -- I gradually became aware of poems that could enrich my classes and I began to incorporate poetry in outside readings and essay topics and class discussions.

Here are links to poems that introduce the lives of four math-women:

     Sophie Germain (1776-1831)

     Florence Nightingale  (1820-1910)

     Amalie "Emmy" Noether  (1882-1935)

     Grace Murray Hopper (1906 - 1988)

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

Math Anxiety can be a hard topic for student or teacher to bring up -- but airing of views and healing might come from discussion.  Poems to consider include: 

Counting the Women . . .

     Sometimes a professional group or a meeting-agenda or a table of contents contains so few women's names that they are easily counted.  In this syllable-square stanza, I praise the absence of that condition: 

     This stanza and others with similar attitude appear in "Give Her Your Support" -- a poetry-page published recently in Math Horizons.  For the entire collection, follow this link.

Mathematicians are not just white dudes . . .

     Recently I found the wonderfully informative website arbitrarily close: musings on math and teaching -- my first visit to the site was to this 2016 posting about "The Mathematician's Project" -- a project and posting that offers lots of resources and links to introduce us to female mathematicians, black mathematicians, and more . . . 
     The following lines are from a puzzle-poem by mathematician-poet Benjamin Banneker -- a non-white dude; the sample has been obtained from a website that celebrates Banneker -- a website compiled by Washington, DC high school teacher John Mahoney.  These lines come from Puzzle 5:

A snip from a puzzle by Benjamin Banneker

Seek . . . and Find

     This blog has more than a thousand posts -- and many have been discovered as the days passed and are not organized by topic.  To explore, simply scroll down and encounter a variety of math-poetic views.  If you visit this post for March 18, 2019 you will find a list of titles and links to all of the previous posts.  If you are seeking a post on a particular topic, perhaps you will want to use the SEARCH feature in the right column of the blog.  For example, if you enter "math women" you get this list of postings. The SEARCH entry term "imaginary" leads to these posts.   Enjoy!

Give HER your support

  
                     In school, many
                     gifted math girls.
                     Later, so few
                     famed math women!

Thank you to Math Horizons (edited by Dave Richeson) for recent publication of "Give HER Your Support" -- a collection of syllable-square stanzas (one of which is given above) that focus on math-women.  Online access to the article is available here -- and this link leads to a PDF of the article that I have downloaded and made available from my website.

Looking back . . . titles, links to previous posts

      For your browsing pleasure,here are titles and links to previous blog postings.  Below are listed linked-titles of posts from 2018 and up-to now in 2019 and here is a link to a list of titles and links for posts prior to 2018.  

•       March 13   An Interview of/by a Mathy Poet
•       March 11   Celebrate Pi-Day on 3.14
•       March  6    Celebrate Math-Women with Poems!
•       March  4    Math in 17 Syllables

February 2019: 

• Solving for X, Searching for LIFE
• Stories of Black Mathematicians (event postponed)
• All Numbers are Interesting . . .
• George Washington, cherry tree, lifespan . . .
• Musical sounds of math words -- in a CENTO
• If 2017 was a poem title . . .
• Mathematics and Valentine's Day
• Speed flunking math . . . NO, NO!
• Quantum Lyrics -- Poems

Celebrate Math-Women with Poems!

March is Women's History Month!
March 8 is International Women's Day!

and here in this blog we celebrate math-women with poems!

Herein appear lots of poems featuring women in math and the SEARCH box in the right-column may help you find them. To find a list of useful search terms, scroll down the right-hand column.   For example, here is a link to a selection of poems found using the pair of search terms "women  equal."   AND, here are links to several poems to get you started:

A poem by Brian McCabe about Sophie Germain;

a poem by Eavan Boland about Grace Murray Hopper;    

a poem by Carol Dorf about Ada Lovelace;

a poem of mine about Sofia Kovalevsky;

a poem of mine about Emmy Noether.

Musical sounds of math words -- in a CENTO

  A cento is a literary work formed by assembling 

words or phrases from other writers.  

As a math-person, I love to hear the melodic rhythm of certain multi-syllabic mathematical terms.  And so I have looked at a list of dissertation-titles of twentieth century female mathematicians -- and I have chosen words from these titles that sounded lovely to me.  Here is my cento poem; read it ALOUD and enjoy the sounds.

"Celebrating Dissertations"     

 The math-women whose titles have been sampled here are:

If 2017 was a poem title . . .

     On my shelf is a 2018 anthology entitled Women of Resistance:  Poems for a New Feminism and, in its Table of Contents, I am particularly drawn to the title that includes a prime number:  "If 2017 was a poem title" by Mahogany L. Browne.  Here is a provocative stanza from that poem:

     A Math Problem
     If 1 woman got a 7 Mac 11
     & 2 heaters for the beemer
     How many Congress seats will NRA lose?
     How many votes will it take for a sexual predator
          to lift the White House off her feet?

For more by this poet, here is a link to Black Girl Magic:  a Poem by Mahogany L. Browne (Roaring Book Press, 2018).

Mathematical motherhood -- keeping count

     The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, with new issues coming twice a year, late in January and July, is a wonderful resource.  Their latest issue (July 2018) was themed "Mathematics and Motherhood" and is an example of their wonderful support for expanding our images of mathematicians to recognize the vital contributions of women.
     From that issue, here are opening stanzas of  a poem by Nevada scientist and mathematician Marylesa Howard -- lines that offer a mathematical description of the constant adjustments of parenthood.   Several decades ago, when I was a math professor and parent of young children, I needed to keep details of parenting away from my profession -- a divided life.  I'm glad things are different now.

Examining boundaries for Math-Women

Mathematician Ursula Whitcher is a versatile and interesting person -- and currently an editor for the American Mathematical Society's Mathematical Reviews.  It was my pleasure to meet and work with her at a conference on "Creative Writing in Mathematics . . ." in Banff in 2016.  Like me, Whitcher writes some poetry -- and here is one of her poems -- this one recognizing the isolation of math-woman Sophie Germain.

       Boundary Conditions     by Ursula Whitcher

               Royal Academy of Science, Paris, 1823

       This is her moment of triumph:
       a seat at the center, a node.
       Mademoiselle Germain sits silent,
       head upright, chaperoned.
       Academy members rise
       or dip; the speaker drones.