Marjorie Batchelor

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Marjorie Blake (Marj) Batchelor-Winter is an American mathematician known for her work on coalgebras and supermanifolds. She is an emeritus staff member in the department of pure mathematics and mathematical statistics at the University of Cambridge in England, [1] where she was formerly the graduate education officer [2] and director of the Cambridge Mathematics Placements summer programme. [3]

Contents

Education

Batchelor is the daughter of William Henry Batchelor, a medical researcher and administrator at the National Institutes of Health. [4] She graduated from Smith College in 1973, and in 2008 returned to Smith with her husband, Alan Winter, to help revive the tradition of change ringing at Smith. [5]

She became a student of Bertram Kostant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, completing her Ph.D. there in 1978 with a dissertation on The Structure of Supermanifolds. [6]

Research

In the theory of supermanifolds, Batchelor's theorem states that every supermanifold can be realized as a sheaf of differential forms over the exterior bundle of a vector bundle. Batchelor published its proof in her 1979 paper, "The structure of supermanifolds". [7]

Activism

At Cambridge, Batchelor became known for her efforts to encourage women in mathematics, and to build a more collegial and interactive atmosphere among the students studying for the Mathematical Tripos. [8]

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References

  1. "Emeritus Staff", People, Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, University of Cambridge, retrieved 2019-09-20
  2. Research Student Handbook (PDF), University of Cambridge Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, p. 20, retrieved 2019-09-20
  3. Summer research in mathematics, University of Cambridge Faculty of Mathematics, retrieved 2019-09-20
  4. "William Henry Batchelor, NIH Administrator", Obituarues, Washington Post, March 12, 2004, retrieved 2019-09-20
  5. "The Bells of Smith", Smithipedia, retrieved 2019-09-20
  6. Marjorie Batchelor at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  7. Reviews of "The structure of supermanifolds" (Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 253: 329–338, 1979): Zbl   0413.58002; A. Verona, MR 0536951. See also Blattner, Robert J.; Rawnsley, John H. (1984), "Remarks on Batchelor's theorem", Mathematical aspects of superspace (Hamburg, 1983), NATO Adv. Sci. Inst. Ser. C Math. Phys. Sci., vol. 132, Reidel, Dordrecht, pp. 161–171, MR   0773083 ; Tuynman, Gijs M. (2004), "Section IV.8: Batchelor's theorem", Supermanifolds and Supergroups, Mathematics and its Applications, vol. 570, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 196ff, ISBN   1-4020-2296-4, MR   2102797 ; Mangiarotti, L.; Sardanashvily, G. (2000), "Theorem 9.2.2 (Batchelor's theorem)", Connections in classical and quantum field theory, World Scientific Publishing Co., Inc., River Edge, NJ, p. 290, doi:10.1142/9789812813749, ISBN   981-02-2013-8, MR   1764255
  8. Williams, R. M. (2010), "What about the women now?", in Hobbs, Catherine; Paycha, Sylvie (eds.), European Women in Mathematics: Proceedings of the 13th General Meeting, University of Cambridge, UK, 3–6 September 2007, World Scientific, pp. 175–188. See in particular p. 187.