Association for Women in Mathematics

Last updated
Association for Women in Mathematics
Formation1971
Type Professional organization
Headquarters Providence, Rhode Island
Membership
5200
President
Talitha Washington
Website awm-math.org

The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a professional society whose mission is to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment of women and girls in the mathematical sciences. The AWM was founded in 1971 and incorporated in the state of Massachusetts. AWM has approximately 5200 members, including over 250 institutional members, such as colleges, universities, institutes, and mathematical societies. It offers numerous programs and workshops to mentor women and girls in the mathematical sciences. Much of AWM's work is supported through federal grants.

Contents

History

The Association was founded in 1971 as the Association of Women Mathematicians, but the name was changed almost immediately. As reported in "A Brief History of the Association for Women in Mathematics: The Presidents' Perspectives", by Lenore Blum: [1]

As Judy Green remembers (and Chandler Davis, early AWM friend, concurs):

The formal idea of women getting together and forming a caucus was first made publicly at a MAG [Mathematics Action Group] meeting in 1971 ... in Atlantic City. Joanne Darken, then an instructor at Temple University and now at the Community College of Philadelphia, stood up at the meeting and suggested that the women present remain and form a caucus. I have been able to document six women who remained: me (I was a graduate student at Maryland at the time), Joanne Darken, Mary Gray (she was already at American University), Diane Laison (then an instructor at Temple), Gloria Olive (a Senior Lecturer at the University of Otago, New Zealand who was visiting the U.S. at the time) and Annie Selden... It's not absolutely clear what happened next, except that I've personally always thought that Mary was responsible for getting the whole thing organized ....

Mary Gray, an early organizer and first president, placed an advertisement in the February 1971 Notices of the AMS, and wrote the first issue of the AWM Newsletter that May. Early goals of the association focused on equal pay for equal work, as well as equal consideration for admission to graduate school and support while there; for faculty appointments at all levels; for promotion and for tenure; for administrative appointments; and for government grants, positions on review and advisory panels and positions in professional organizations. Alice T. Schafer, who succeeded Mary Gray as second president of the AWM, set up an AWM office at Wellesley College. At this point, AWM began to be a recognized established presence in the mathematics scene. In 1973 AWM was legally incorporated, and in 1974 it received tax-exempt status. [2]

The AWM holds an annual meeting at the Joint Mathematics Meetings. In 2011, during its fortieth-anniversary celebration 40 Years and Counting, the association initiated a biennial research symposium. [3]

The Association for Women in Mathematics Newsletter is the member journal of the organization. The first issue was published in May 1971, a few months after AWM was founded. All regular members of AWM can request that hard copies of the newsletter be sent to them. The newsletter is now open access and anyone can read or download a pdf file of recent or past issues from the AWM website.

Lectures

The AWM sponsors three honorary lecture series. [4]

Awards

The AWM sponsors several awards and prizes. [4]

Three recently created prizes for early-career women are also sponsored by the AWM. [4]

The AWM Fellows program recognizes "individuals who have demonstrated a sustained commitment to the support and advancement of women in the mathematical sciences". [5]

Presidents

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Mathematical Society</span> Association of professional mathematicians

The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, advocacy and other programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lenore Blum</span> USA computer scientist and mathematician

Lenore Carol Blum is an American computer scientist and mathematician who has made contributions to the theories of real number computation, cryptography, and pseudorandom number generation. She was a distinguished career professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University until 2019 and is currently a professor in residence at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also known for her efforts to increase diversity in mathematics and computer science.

The Noether Lecture is a distinguished lecture series that honors women "who have made fundamental and sustained contributions to the mathematical sciences". The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) established the annual lectures in 1980 as the Emmy Noether Lectures, in honor of one of the leading mathematicians of her time. In 2013 it was renamed the AWM-AMS Noether Lecture and since 2015 is sponsored jointly with the American Mathematical Society (AMS). The recipient delivers the lecture at the yearly American Joint Mathematics Meetings held in January.

Alice Turner Schafer was an American mathematician. She was one of the founding members of the Association for Women in Mathematics in 1971.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary W. Gray</span> American mathematician, statistician, and lawyer

Mary Lee Wheat Gray is an American mathematician, statistician, and lawyer. She is the author of books and papers in the fields of mathematics, mathematics education, computer science, applied statistics, economic equity, discrimination law, and academic freedom. She is currently on the Board of Advisers for POMED and is the chair of the Board of Directors of AMIDEAST.

Jill Catherine Pipher was the president of the American Mathematical Society. She began a two-year term in 2019. She is also the past president of the Association for Women in Mathematics, and she was the first director of the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics, an NSF-funded mathematics institute based in Providence, Rhode Island.

There is a long history of women in mathematics in the United States. All women mentioned here are American unless otherwise noted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cora Sadosky</span> Argentine mathematician

Cora Susana Sadosky de Goldstein was an Argentine mathematician and Professor of Mathematics at Howard University.

Catherine Sulem is a mathematician and violinist at the University of Toronto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lai-Sang Young</span> American mathematician

Lai-Sang Lily Young is a Hong Kong-born American mathematician who holds the Henry & Lucy Moses Professorship of Science and is a professor of mathematics and neural science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. Her research interests include dynamical systems, ergodic theory, chaos theory, probability theory, statistical mechanics, and neuroscience. She is particularly known for introducing the method of Markov returns in 1998, which she used to prove exponential correlation delay in Sinai billiards and other hyperbolic dynamical systems.

Suzanne Marie Lenhart is an American mathematician who works in partial differential equations, optimal control and mathematical biology. She is a Chancellor's Professor of mathematics at the University of Tennessee, an associate director for education and outreach at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, and a part-time researcher at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Cathy Kessel is a U.S. researcher in mathematics education and consultant, past-president of Association for Women in Mathematics, winner of the Association for Women in Mathematics Louise Hay Award, and a blogger on Mathematics and Education. She served as an editor for Illustrative Mathematics from the end of 2015 through July 15, 2017.

The AWM–Sadosky Prize in Analysis is a prize given every other year by the Association for Women in Mathematics to an outstanding young female researcher in mathematical analysis. It was established in 2012, and is named after Cora Sadosky, a mathematician specializing in analysis who became president of the AWM.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">European Women in Mathematics</span> Professional organization

European Women in Mathematics (EWM) is an international association of women working in the field of mathematics in Europe. The association participates in political and strategic work to promote the role of women in mathematics and offers its members direct support. Its goals include encouraging women to study mathematics and providing visibility to women mathematicians. It is the "first and best known" of several organizations devoted to women in mathematics in Europe.

The AWM–Microsoft Research Prize in Algebra and Number Theory and is a prize given every other year by the Association for Women in Mathematics to an outstanding young female researcher in algebra or number theory. It was funded in 2012 by Microsoft Research and first issued in 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah J. Greenwald</span> American mathematician

Sarah J. Greenwald is professor of mathematics at Appalachian State University and faculty affiliate of gender, women's and sexuality studies.

The AWM-SIAM Sonia Kovalevsky Lecture is an award and lecture series that "highlights significant contributions of women to applied or computational mathematics." The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) planned the award and lecture series in 2002 and first awarded it in 2003. The lecture is normally given each year at the SIAM Annual Meeting. Award winners receive a signed certificate from the AWM and SIAM presidents.

Association for Women in Mathematics Newsletter is the membership journal of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and is published bimonthly. The inaugural issue appeared in May 1971, a few months after the AWM began. The first editor was Mary W. Gray, who was also the first "chairman" of the AWM. Gray was succeeded as editor by Alice T. Schafer, who also took over as president. Schafer edited a few issues and Judith Roitman succeeded her; Roitman later became the fourth AWM president. In 1977, Anne Leggett was appointed editor, a position which she retains to this day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yaiza Canzani</span> Spanish and Uruguayan mathematician

Yaiza Canzani García is a Spanish and Uruguayan mathematician known for her work in mathematical analysis, and particularly in spectral geometry and microlocal analysis. She is an associate professor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

References

  1. "A Brief History of the Association for Women in Mathematics (from Notices): How it was". Association for Women in Mathematics. Retrieved 2019-02-02.
  2. Greenwald, Sarah J.; Anne M. Leggett, and Jill E. Thomley (July 2015). "The Association for Women in Mathematics: How and Why It Was Founded, and Why It's Still Needed in the 21st Century". The Mathematical Intelligencer . 37 (3): 11–21. doi:10.1007/s00283-015-9539-8. S2CID   118325702. see page 16
  3. "40 Years and Counting: 2011 is AWM's 40th Anniversary Year!". Association for Women in Mathematics. Association for Women in Mathematics. Retrieved 2 February 2019.
  4. 1 2 3 "AWM Programs". Association for Women in Mathematics. Retrieved 23 December 2018.
  5. "Launch of the AWM Fellows Program". Association for Women in Mathematics. Retrieved 23 December 2018.

Further reading