<p>QM- Margaret Geller?</p>
<p>Cobrat, re-read. I said we’d look to X, not Pascal. <em>As part of asking for contemporary figures.</em> I think you missed that. If you want to blow out the discussion of today’s intriguing women scientists, not on my dime, ok? Thanks.</p>
<p>I do understand that there is an advantage in being able to offer young women role models who are like older sisters, or aunts who are not so widely separated from them in age. I will see what I can come up with, though it might take a bit of work.</p>
<p>One of my main criticisms of Harvard relates to its low tenure rate. When I was a post-doc (just down the street), the tenure rate there was about 2%. Most of the tenured professors were “raided” from other universities. This meant that if you took an Assistant Professorship at Harvard, you pretty much had to plan to move on, after 6 or 7 years. Lots of people took those positions anyway, of course, and they were valuable in a career sense. However, it meant that there was a disconnect between the grad students, post-docs, and Assistant Professors on the one hand, and the tenured faculty on the other hand.</p>
<p>Is this comment about Harvard related in any way to what we have been posting about? Yes, actually. I am using it to acknowledge and illustrate why it would be valuable to have a continuous range of ages among the distinguished women scientists that one hears about. </p>
<p>Meg Urry (Yale astrophysicist) is a great example of someone who does distinguished scientific work and also “fights the good fight” for women in STEM fields. She has written very frankly about her experiences as a woman in science, in addition to writing about 150 scientific papers.</p>
<p>Daubechies has just turned 60, and Urry is 59 or so. Clearly, I need to push the ages lower–work for another day.</p>
<p>I don’t know,LF. Becoming a Baroness in recognition of your mathematical work sounds pretty cool to me . Probably the equivalent of all the knighting stuff, Dame. etc, that Queen Elizabeth does. I’m sure it’s a big honor.</p>
<p>Speaking of Urry, If you google Urry Why are there still so few women in science, it will bring up an interesting article and comments from a New York Times piece by Eileen Pollack. Very long though.</p>
<p>Oh, I think it’s really cool that Ingrid is a Baroness! I met her when we were both in our 20’s. She looks very distinguished in the picture on Wikipedia.</p>
<p>Did you look at that AIP woman physicist of the month link (3 years) and see the various colleges where they are? Interesting.</p>
<p>Don’t worry, I like the Baroness thing, too. But she’s got some other neat honors including (let’s not argue about this one, ok?) MacArthur.</p>
<p>Oh, before I retire from the discussion for today:</p>
<p>Shirley Jackson is another woman physicist that women entering the field should know.<br>
<a href=“Shirley Ann Jackson - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Ann_Jackson</a>
She is the President of Rensselaer. Interestingly, she was an undergrad at MIT–according to wikipedia one of “fewer than twenty African-American students” at MIT at the time, and the only one pursuing theoretical physics. The wikipedia article also says that she was the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. from MIT. Afterwards, she worked at Fermilab and CERN, before joining Bell Labs, and doing distinguished work in solid-state physics. She chaired the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before going to Rensselaer as President. (This is the tip of the iceberg–I recommend taking a look at the wikipedia article.)</p>
<p>I can personally attest that Prof. (now President) Jackson has been wonderfully generous in encouraging younger women in science. She has also worked to encourage participation by African-Americans and other under-represented groups in STEM fields. </p>
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<p>However, isn’t there the issue of how one’s career as a topflight academic/scientist can only be truly assessed and gauged toward the middle/twilight years of one’s career after a large body of research/achievements unless one earned a prominent award like the Fields Medal or a Nobel prize very early in one’s academic career? </p>
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<p>Unless I’m mistaken, I would think it’d be a higher honor than being knighted as becoming a Baron/Baroness means one’s raised to a position of nobility higher than that of a Knight/Dame under the aristocratic rank hierarchies I know of. </p>
<p>LF: Margaret Geller is another great example–I think she is older than Daubechies and Urry, though.<br>
(More another day.)</p>
<p>You could be right, cobrat. My main point was that I’m sure it is a big honor. </p>
<p>Jakson is great. This aspect of this thread is grand. Thanks. Fretfulmother may be getting some great models for her students.</p>
<p>I don’t believe in role models people can’t talk to even if they are alive. My kids think I am ancient and I thought it was hilarious when a high school kid who was presenting his entrepreneurship summer camp project referred to his target audience as middle aged women, those who are 30 and above. I have wondered ever since then if 16 year olds consider 30 as middle aged even if they are not going around saying that.</p>
<p>I am fine with someone on CC who grew on CC being role models. I can live with Mollie or xiggi being role models to kids on CC since they can track their old posts, see what they have been through and still contact them to ask questions and get a real reply back. What is the point of having a role model if all you can do is read about them in books?</p>
<p>For comparison of titles of nobility, Margaret Thatcher was named a Baroness in 1992. It is significantly above “Knight” or “Dame.”</p>
<p>So, a younger person or two:</p>
<p>Melanie Wood, a personal hero of mine, as the first woman member of a U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad team. At the college level, she was the first American woman and the second woman overall to be named a Putnam Fellow. Undergraduate at Duke, which has a superb reputation for the education of women in mathematics. Gates-Cambride Fellow, Fulbright Fellow, National Science Foundation Fellow, Ph.D. at Princeton, advised by Manjul Bhargava (another rock star of mathematics). Also, the first woman to win the Morgan Prize. Apparently, she is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin (which, in my opinion, should have tenured her already, but that’s an issue for another time), after having been a Szego Assistant Professor at Stanford for two years. </p>
<p>Her wikipedia profile is here:
<a href=“Melanie Wood - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Wood</a></p>
<p>Melanie turns 33 this year.</p>
<p>She is also an extremely nice person! You might think that all of the media coverage (well, the mathematics media, anyway) would go to her head, but I see no sign of that.</p>
<p>It is also interesting, but disheartening, to me that after Melanie had done really, really well in mathematics competitions, the people (mostly men, I would guess) around her during her graduate program seemed to be quick to remind her that excellence in competition math does not automatically translate into excellence in research in mathematics. Reaching the “empyrean heights” does not completely protect a woman from . . . um . . . challenging commentary. </p>
<p>Also, you might seize on her as an excellent counter-example to my general thesis about admissions, but It’s clear that she <em>chose</em> Duke for her undergraduate work–I am certain that she was admitted everywhere she applied. She might have been a near-unique case for a university to extend an offer to someone who did not apply! Also, it is true that she is at Wisconsin, now.</p>
<p>Another great woman and an obvious choice: Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman Fields Medalist! This year, at age 37. She won gold medals in two consecutive International Mathematical Olympiads, representing Iran. She was the first Iranian student to achieve a perfect score in the IMO, the first Iranian student to win 2 gold medals in the IMO, and also the first Iranian woman to win a gold medal in the IMO. (I don’t know how early she appears on the list of women who have won IMO gold medals, overall).</p>
<p>Her wikipedia entry is here:
<a href=“Maryam Mirzakhani - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Mirzakhani</a></p>
<p>This may have been cross-posted with other people, because I haven’t read the most recent thread items.</p>
<p>Why not talk about top women in other arenas? For starters, this book, authored by a personal friend, speaks to some of their skills <a href=“http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service/organization/latest_thinking/how_remarkable_women_lead”>http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service/organization/latest_thinking/how_remarkable_women_lead</a></p>
<p>And Harvard Business Review’s article on women in leadership <a href=“It’s Time for a New Discussion on “Women in Leadership””>http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/03/its-time-for-a-new-discussion-on-women-in-leadership/</a></p>
<p>A quite young woman, Sherry Gong, is a grad student at MIT in mathematics now, after having done her undergrad work at Harvard. She was the second woman gold medalist in the IMO. I estimate that she is 24 or 25. </p>
<p>Gong was named the Clay Olympiad Scholar in 2005, for the most original solution to a problem on the USAMO. She also won a silver medal in the International Physics Olympiad.</p>
<p>The wikipedia site about her states that she scored above 100 in Harvard’s “famous problem solving course, Math 55.” Apparently she had perfect scores on all of the tests, assignments, bonus problems, and the final. (Sheesh! The prof couldn’t come up with a special bonus-bonus problem that would be a challenge?)</p>
<p>Her wikipedia entry is here:
<a href=“Sherry Gong - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherry_Gong</a></p>
<p>Alison Miller, the first American woman gold medalist in the IMO, is currently a grad student in mathematics at Princeton (if the wikipedia entry on her is up to date). I estimate that she is 27 or 28. She was an undergrad in mathematics at Harvard, and there won multiple prizes including the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam award for performance by a woman mathematician on the Putnam exam in mathematics (3 times), the Alice T. Schaefer Prize from the American Mathematical Society (co-winner), and the Hoopes Prize for her thesis. She was a Churchill Scholar immediately after finishing her bachelor’s degree with high honors from Harvard. Interestingly, like Melanie Wood, she has Manjul Bhargava as her Ph.D. advisor (did I mention that he is a rock star in mathematics?).</p>
<p>As an interesting side-note, she came in third in the National Spelling Bee, in 2000.</p>
<p>Her wikipedia entry is here:
<a href=“Alison Miller - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Miller</a></p>
<p>I am happy to take inspiration from people I have only read about. I am not kidding that Maria Mitchell was very important to me while I was growing up, even though I never met her. There was just a paragraph about her (with a sketch, I think) in my 8th grade science book.</p>
<p>Absolutely, jym626, I am happy for people to post about top women in other arenas. I am just in the process of covering a few people in areas that I know or know tangentially. Other posters will need to highlight top women across a much broader range.</p>
<p>Q, I’d think learning more about the Melanies could encourage young gals- including the trials or hurdles. </p>
<p>Imo, if we want to encourage more girls to STEM, we have to make those worlds more understandable, more than just about mastering the math-sci courses. Give these young girls women they can find ways to relate to, doing the work today, with gusto. I don’t think it’s enough to identify girls who are highly skilled in hs physics or calculus and say, you can look into this in college, take some of those courses, and figure it out as you go. STEM can be arduous and we need ways to keep the fires lit. I do think it would help to plant those seeds in hs- and do mean more than our own kids, whom we can already expose to more. That’s all. </p>