Five Inspiring Women in Mathematics

Mar 16, 2021 | Oviedo

In honor of Women’s History Month, Mathnasium of Oviedo is spotlighting five inspiring women in mathematics. From computer science to economics, math is used every day and can change the world.

Sandy Massey 

Sandy Massey, Mathnasium of Oviedo’s co-owner and Director of Financial Management, has 27 years of financial accounting and management experience. Before opening Mathnasium with her husband, she worked in the federal government sector where she has held leadership positions in the Departments of Agriculture and Homeland Security, and recently retired from NASA Kennedy Space Center. 

During her time in NASA, Sandy was a Deputy Chief Financial Officer and used math every single day to plan, implement, and manage budgets. Budgeting allowed for space exploration research and projects to take place. Although Sandy is not a mathematician per se, but she applies her math skills every day to successfully run Mathnasium and help students throughout Oviedo. 

Learn more about Sandy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9yY_E8z-sg

 

Katherine Johnson, 1918-2020 

As a young girl, Katherine Johnson loved math. She started high school when she was just 10 years old, began college at 15, and graduated summa cum laude at the age of 18 from West Virginia State College. She was known as a human “computer” for solving hard math problems by hand, as computers didn’t exist in the 1950s. 

She worked for NASA for more than 30 years, and made history when she worked with an all-male flight research team to put an astronaut into orbit around Earth, and put a man on the Moon. She dedicated her life to sharing her love for math and science and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. Her work is also celebrated in the movie, “Hidden Figures.”

Katherine passed away in February 2020 at 101 years-old, but her legacy lives on. In February 2021, Northrop Grumman named the NG-15 Cygnus cargo spacecraft “S.S. Katherine Johnson” in honor of her critical contributions to spaceflight. 

Read more about Katherine:
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/who-was-katherine-johnson-k4

 

Ada Lovelace, 1815-1852

Ada Lovelace was a British mathematician and was called the first computer programmer.  As a teenager, she helped Charles Babbage, a professor at Cambridge, create the Analytical Engine---now considered a precursor to the computer. Charles was solely focused on the calculating aspects, but Ada supplied notes that helped envision other possibilities, including the idea of computer-generated music. 

Her notes also included an algorithm showing how to calculate a sequence of numbers, which forms the basis for the design of the modern computer. It was the first algorithm created expressly for a machine to perform. 

The early programming language Ada was named for her, and we remember her legacy  the second Tuesday in October, called Ada Lovelace Day, on which the contributions of women to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are honored.

Read more about Ada: 
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ada-Lovelace

 

Julia Robinson 1919-1985

Julia Robinson’s career in mathematics began in the 1940’s after receiving her Ph.D. in math from the University of California, Berkeley. One of her most notable impacts in the world of mathematics was her role in solving one of the 20th century’s grand mathematical questions. 

David Hilbert issued the first of his 23 challenges to the mathematics community during a lecture in Paris at the 1900 International Congress of Mathematicians. The 10th problem is a deep question about the limitations of our mathematical knowledge, though initially it looks like a more straightforward problem in number theory. In 1952, she published “Existential definability in arithmetic,” which proved essential to solving Hilbert’s 10th problem. 

Years later, she became the first woman to be elected to the mathematics section of the National Academy of Sciences, the first woman to serve as president of the American Mathematical Society, and a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. 

Read more about Julia: 
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-julia-robinson-helped-define-limits-mathematical-knowledge

 

Phoebe Cai

At only 15 years-old, Phoebe Cai was considered one of the world’s smartest teenagers and competed against the most talented kids and teenagers across the nation for one of the most prestigious tournaments in the world of mathematics.  

She earned the bronze medal at the 2012 Math Prize for Girls Olympiad and had won fifth place overall at the 2013 Harvard–MIT Math tournament, along with the Middlebury College French Award. On top of that, Phoebe received the 2013 Society of Women Engineers Award for her high honors in science and math. 

She  also performed data analysis for research projects at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and MIT’s Science Institute. Years later, Phoebe graduated with an economics degree from MIT and is currently a Harvard Ph.D. Candidate in Economics.

Read more about Phoebe:
https://thebestschools.org/features/worlds-50-smartest-teenagers/

 

Although these women have different backgrounds, life experiences, and careers, their love for math is the common denominator. Math is all around us and together we celebrate these women’s achievements and contributions. Together, they changed lives through math.

“What I really am is a mathematician,” the closing page of Julia Robinson’s autobiography says. “Rather than being remembered as the first woman this or that, I would prefer to be remembered, as a mathematician should, simply for the theorems I have proved and the problems I have solved."

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