Irena Swanson

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Irena Swanson is an American mathematician specializing in commutative algebra. She is head of the Purdue University Department of Mathematics since 2020 [1] . She was a professor of mathematics at Reed College from 2005 to 2020.

Contents

Education and career

Swanson is originally from the former Yugoslavia, in what is now Slovenia, [2] [3] and was attracted to mathematics from a very young age. [3] She came to the US as an exchange student in Tooele, Utah in her last year of high school. [3] There, she became interested in Reed College, the alma mater of her host family's daughter, [2] and applied only to Reed for her undergraduate studies. [3] She is a 1987 graduate of Reed, [4] with an undergraduate thesis on functional analysis. [3]

She went to Purdue University for graduate study, completing her Ph.D. in mathematics in 1992. Her dissertation, Tight Closure, Joint Reductions, And Mixed Multiplicities, was supervised by Craig Huneke. [4] [5] She became assistant professor at the University of Michigan in 1992 [6] and joined the faculty at New Mexico State University in 1995, becoming full professor in 2005. In the same year she moved back to Reed. [4]

Swanson returned to Purdue in 2020 as Head of the Department of Mathematics. She is the first woman to hold the position. [1]

Contributions

With her advisor, Craig Huneke, Swanson is the author of the book Integral Closure of Ideals, Rings, and Modules (Cambridge University Press, 2006). [7] She is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Commutative Algebra.

Swanson is also a creator of mathematical quilts, [2] [8] and is the inventor of a quilting technique, "tube piecing", for making quilts more efficiently. [2]

Recognition

Swanson was included in the 2019 class of fellows of the American Mathematical Society "for contributions to commutative algebra, exposition, service to the profession and mentoring". [9]

References

  1. 1 2 Irena Swanson selected as next Department Head, April 15, 2020
  2. 1 2 3 4 Best, Katelyn (March 2016), "The Geometry of Quilting: Prof. Irena Swanson '87 adds a new twist to a mathematical art form", Reed Magazine, vol. 95, no. 1, Reed College , retrieved 2018-11-08
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Irena Swanson", Women in Maths, June 1, 2016
  4. 1 2 3 "Irena Swanson '87", Faculty Profiles, Reed College, archived from the original on 2020-07-10, retrieved 2018-11-08
  5. ↑ Irena Swanson at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  6. ↑ "Short CV" (pdf). purdue.edu. July 2020. Retrieved 2022-07-28.
  7. ↑ Reviews of Integral Closure of Ideals, Rings, and Modules:
  8. ↑ Some of Irena Swanson's mathematics-related quilts, archived from the original on 2018-11-08, retrieved 2018-11-08. See also Swanson, Irena (2011), "Quilting Semiregular Tessellations", in belcastro, sarah-marie; Yackel, Carolyn (eds.), Crafting by Concepts: Fiber Arts and Mathematics, A K Peters / CRC Press, ISBN   9781568814353
  9. ↑ 2019 Class of the Fellows of the AMS, American Mathematical Society , retrieved 2018-11-08
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