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Mathematics

Content type
Collection

Pamela Sussman-Paternoster

Project
Women Who Dared

Julie Johnson interviewed Pamela Paternoster-Sussman on March 1, 2005, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as part of the Women Who Dared Oral History Project. Paternoster-Sussman shares her upbringing in a blended family, strong Jewish identity, experiences of antisemitism, activism, teaching marginalized students, and her educational pursuits in Cleveland and Cambridge.

Collage of Gertrude Goldhaber on pink background

Women in STEM: Gertrude Goldhaber and Me

Maya Viswanathan

Just as Dr. Goldhaber wanted to personally encourage others to study science and math, I too, try to personally invite others in the hope of creating a more fun and welcoming environment. 

Math Equations on a Chalkboard

Mind Your Own Business

Molly Weiner

My accelerated math class has nearly twice as many boys as girls. There are only five of us. I’m no stranger to a good mansplaining, or to feeling like an anomaly in a math bros club. While many interactions in Honors Precalc make me feel like a fish out of water, a comment like “mind your own business” really highlights just how different it is to be a girl in an advanced math class.

Topics: Schools, Mathematics
Emmy Noether and Martine Rothblatt

Female Heroes in STEM: Emmy Noether and Martine Rothblatt

Shira Minsk

Female leaders in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) are few and far between, and Jewish female role models in those fields are even harder to find. Emmy Noether and Martine Rothblatt are superheros whose hard work and intellect propelled them to defy the odds and make contributions to the world that will outlive them.

Emmy Noether, Edited Doodle

Shining a Light on Mathematical Brilliance

Dahlia Japhet

Over the past 106 years, 48 women have been honored with the Nobel Prize. Amalie Emmy Noether, a German Jewish mathematician who is now known as the “mother of abstract algebra,” is not one of them.

Shafi Goldwasser

Shafi Goldwasser was honored with the Turing Award, the highest honor in computer science, for her work in revolutionizing the field of cryptography.

Gertrude Elion / Nina Fefferman

Scientists

Leaders in the Lab

Nina Fefferman

Evolutionary biologist and epidemiologist Nina Fefferman uses mathematical models to chart how individual choices ripple outward to affect whole groups, helping create strategies to save populations from endangered tortoises to human communities stricken by disease.

Pamela Sussman Paternoster

Pamela Sussman Paternoster’s work with the Algebra Project helped teach thousands of disadvantaged students math skills that could open up the possibility of a college education.

Ruth Barcan Marcus, 1921 - 2012

Not afraid to make enemies and blessed with many loyal friends, [she] was unrelenting and consistent in upholding the highest standards for rigor and clarity in philosophy and in academia more generally.

"Top Secret Rosies": How female computers helped win WWII

Leah Berkenwald

Back before Microsoft, IBM, and Apple, the word "computer" referred to a person who computes.

Mollie Orshansky, 1915 - 2006

Mollie was very smart, independent, and a hardworking government employee. She was called 'Miss Poverty' because she developed the poverty index widely used by the Federal government as a basis for benefit programs involving low income individuals and families.

Science in Israel

In Israel, awareness has grown recently that only through proactive effort can gender equality in scientific fields can be realized. Thorough investigations of inequalities have taken place, and actions are being taken to catalyze policy and systematic action to further women in science and technology.

Mattie Rotenberg

The first woman and the first Jew to be granted a doctorate in physics at the University of Toronto, Mattie Rotenberg also founded Toronto’s first Jewish day school in 1929 to educate her five children. She went on to embark upon a successful second career in journalism.

Olga Taussky-Todd

A self-proclaimed “torchbearer for matrix theory,” Olga Taussky-Todd made the previously little-known field essential for scientists and mathematicians.

Mindel Cherniack Sheps

As a pioneering physician, biostatistician, and demographer, Mindel Cherniack Sheps was acutely aware of the role science could play as a powerful social force. She taught that peace, social justice, and science were inextricably bound; humanism in any field must be based on social equity and knowledge.

Emmy Noether

Emmy Noether, a German mathematician, was the world leader in the twentieth-century development of modern “abstract” algebra. Her writing, the students she inspired, and those students’ books wholly changed the form and content of higher algebra throughout the world. She influenced a generation of mathematicians, several of whom borrowed heavily from her work to write the major textbooks of the field.

Nelly Neumann

Nelly Neumann completed her doctorate in synthetic geometry in 1909 at Breslau University, making her one of the first women in Germany to obtain such a degree. In her lifetime she provided career guidance to female university students and worked as a secondary school teacher, tackling the intersection of philosophy and mathematics.

Lillian R. Lieber

Frustrated with the way math is taught in schools, Lillian R. Lieber created unconventional, popular books to excite young readers and incite their curiosity.

Margarete Kahn

German mathematician Margarete Kahn worked with fellow Jewish woman Klara Löbenstein and their essential contribution to a famed problem was cited in the publications of several others. Despite earning her doctorate and having a significant impact in her field, Kahn was unable to earn a post-doctoral degree due to discrimination against women, and she worked as a teacher until she was deported by the Nazis.

Käte Hamburger

Käte Hamburger was a German literary scholar and philosopher who developed a philosophical theory of literature.

Hilda Geiringer

A brilliant mathematician who did groundbreaking work in Europe, Hilda Geiringer had to leave her teaching position at the University of Berlin because of Nazi anti-Jewish legislation. She later worked in Turkey, but in the United States, she could only find jobs at women’s colleges despite her many accomplishments.

Cora Berliner

Cora Berliner was an economist and social scientist who held leadership positions in several major Jewish organizations in Germany between 1910 and 1942. These organizations included the Association of Jewish Youth Organizations in Germany, the Reich Representation of German Jews, and the League of Jewish Women.

Hertha Ayrton

Hertha Ayrton was a distinguished British scientist who was the first woman to receive the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society for a scientific work that was exclusively her own. She was committed to suffrage activism and ensuring proper recognition of women’s scientific work.

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