AW-MI ASSOCIATION FOR WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS PRESIDENT'S REPORT It's been four months now since Jill handed me the AWM bowl, and I haven't been this busy since I had two toddler daughters! Certainly the AWM work presents challenges more pleasant and interesting than my other duties. I do hope that all that I'm learning will be digested in time to be put to good use for AWM. (Taped on my wail for years is a "Peanuts" cartoon in which Snoopy is writing his memoirs: "Things I Learned After It Was Too Late"!) If not, the Nominating Committee has come up with a great list of women who will be able to do what I cannot; the slate appears on page 7. It looks as if Jenny Baglivo will be paroled soon from her life sentence as Treasurer. Thanks, Jenny! One thing I have learned is that the President of AWM goes to Washington often. The CBMS Workshop on Graduate Education IN THIS ISSUE took place there May 4-6, 1991, with keynote speakers Luther Williams (from NSF's Education and Human Resources) and Calvin Moore (Chair of MSEB's Committee on Collegiate and University 3 Alice T. Schafer Prize Relations). The focus of the discussions was on how doctoral, masters, and non-degree graduate programs in the mathematical sciences could better serve national needs. Much concern was 9 Tribute to Wilhelm Magnus expressed about the failure of the profession to renew itself adequately, and also for the need for improved interaction between 15 Book Review the educational and research communities. None of the leaders pretends now that the profession can continue in good health drawing solely on its traditional pool of white male students: it's not only fair 17 WAM Program to include women and minorities; it's necessary. Watch for the report from the CBMS workshop which is being prepared by the CBMS 20 Gender Differences Chair, Ivar Stakgold. Meanwhile the MS2000 report, Moving Beyond Myths: Revitalizing Undergraduate Mathematics, has been published by the National Academy. The bulk of it will appear in the July- August Notices; you may want to have a look at it. Part of AWM's role is to identify ways in which the mathematical community can become more attractive and hospitable to women at all stages of their education. This is far from easy, I find, perhaps especially since most of us survived the old system. Please write me your ideas and suggestions, and I promise not to reward you with work, unless you also state your willingness! In this context, Alice Schafer and I represented AWM on May AWM 6th, together with NAM, at the National Academy of Sciences, ASSOCIATION discussing issues of recruitment of women and minorities with Larry Cox and Nathaniel Knox of the Board on Mathematical FOR WOMEN IN Sciences. This was the second such meeting, and the next step MATHEMATICS may involve a planning group to produce a handbook on "pipeline" issues, including resource information and outreach The Association was founded in 1971 in suggestions. I would love to see the old-girls-network broadened Boston, MA. The purpose of the association for this, and I welcome names of people, including yourselves, to is to encourage women to study and to have involve in these activities. I would also like to find a better word active careers in the mathematical sciences. Equal opportunity and the equal treatment of than "pipeline". women in the mathematical sciences are I have just returned from a special panel June 3-4 at NSF on promoted. women in science and engineering, formed to discuss funding The Newsletter is published bi-monthly. The Editor welcomes articles, letters, ana recommendations for women, precollege through professional. announcemel'l~. AWM's own Sue Geller was also there and presented information Circulation: 4,000. © 1991, AWM and recommendations for graduates and undergraduates. Especially exciting for me was the ease with which the panelists EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE moved back and forth between suggestions specific to women and President ideas that would improve the scientific climate for everyone. Carol Wood Department of Mathematics Wesleyan University Washington in July Wesleyan, CT 06459 The NSF-ONR Workshop preceding the ICIAM '91 meeting in cwood@ eagle.wesleyan.edu Washington, DC is all set for July 7, with a great response from Past President graduate students and postdocs. The next issue of the Newsletter Jill Mesirov will contain a report on the events there. Don't miss it, all you Treasurer applied mathematicians! Jenny Baglivo Orono in August Members-at-Large Ruth M. Chamey Come to Orono and be the first on the block to have a copy of Sue Geller our booklet Careers That Count: Opportunities in the Eleanor Green Dawley Jones Mathematical Sciences. On August 8th at the Summer Meetings, Mafia Klawe Ruth Rebekka Struik we will showcase our career booklet at a panel with the same title, cosponsored by the MAA. Jenny Baglivo will chair the panel, Clerk which includes Allyn Jackson and several women featured in our Martha Jaffe booklet as participants. The panel takes place at 3 P.M., followed Newsletter Editor immediately by our business meeting, at which the second Alice T. Anne Leggett Schafer Prize awards will be presented. The winner and runner-up Department of Mathematical Sciences will be there, and we're hoping that the eight honorable mention Loyola University of Chicago recipients will also be able to attend. Congratulations to all ten Chicago, IL 60626 [email protected] women (keep reading for the news story), and thanks for the hard work done by the prize committee: Bhama Srinivasan (Chair), Meetings Coordinator Alice T. Schafer (herselfl), and Jill Mesirov. Bettye Anne Case Executive Director Baltimore in January Patricia N. Cross Box 178 The Noether Lecture Committee has selected Nancy Kopell of Wellesley College Boston University as our Noether Lecturer for 1992, and I am Wellesley, MA 02181 delighted to report that she has accepted our invitation. Thanks to (617) 237-7517; [email protected] the committee: Susan Montgomery, Karen Vogtmann, and 2 Newsletter Volume 21, Number 4, July-August 1991 especially Chuu-Lian Terng, who served as chair ALICE T. SCHAFER and now leaves the committee. Also, welcome to the newest member of the Noether Committee, MATHEMATICS PRIZE Sun-Yung Alice Chang of UCLA. WINNERS! Enormous Thanks Jbanne Neilsen, a senior at Duke University, Thanks to Ethel Ward-McLemore for a repeat was awarded the second annual Alice T. Schafer instance of generosity to AWM, in the form of a Mathematics Prize sponsored by the Association large check sent to Alice Schafer for AWM's use. for Women in Mathematics (AWM). The Prize Ethel is currently involved in research involving carries a stipend of $1000. The Prize is given to an geoscience literature on China, and her support of undergraduate woman in recognition of excellence mathematics and its role in science is most in mathematics. The criteria for selection include, heartening and welcome. but are not limited to, the quality of the nominees' performance in mathematics courses and special To Keep Us (and Them) from Getting programs, an exhibition of real interest in Complacent mathematics, the ability to do independent work, Here is the list I promised last time -- a short and performance in mathematical competitions, if but by no means complete list of departments of any. The Prize is named for AWM former mathematics which currently include NO president and one of its founding members, Alice TENURED WOMAN. Additions accepted. I will T. Schafer, who has done so much for women in update and apologize in this column if any mathematics throughout her career. department is wrongly named. I will not however The task of choosing a winner was a difficult apologize for omissions, nor do I suggest that one for the Prize Committee which consisted of schools not on the list have enough tenured Bhama Srinivasan (Chair), University of Illinois at women. But that's another list. Here goes: Chicago; Alice T. Schafer, Marymount University; and Jill P. Mesirov, Thinking Machines Corpor- M.I.T., Stanford, University of Chicago, and ation. Zvezdelina Stankova, a junior at Bryn Mawr last but never least, and never a tenured woman, College, was declared Runner-Up and will receive the HYP three -- Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. a $100 check. In addition to Neilsen and Stankova, the committee recommended that eight other As I include such lists, I also predict that they exceptionally talented undergraduate women will soon become as outdated as have those receive Honorable Mention. A sophomore and a attitudes which made it possible for six such first-year student were singled out for outstanding departments to exist. performances so early m their mathematical careers. This year the number of nominations received doubled to ninety. It is a tribute to all of the undergraduate women who were nominated that they were recognized by their faculty for such an honor. The Committee took special note of the large number of nominations from community colleges and also of the significant number of older women with families who had been nominated for the prize. The outstanding work and accomplish- ments of the latter group were especially impressive, given the additional demands on their Carol Wood time and energy. Middletown, J~anne Neilsen was described as a "highly June 6, 1991 original, enthusiastic, and talented young mathe- matician" and one of the best undergraduate Volume 21, Number 4, July-August 1991 Newsletter 3 and hopes to graduate with both a bachelor's and a master's degree in mathematics. "One of the brightest young people I have ever known, Zvezde is truly a star, as her name suggests," said Professor Rhonda Hughes in her nomination letter.