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A Celebration of Women in Mathematics at MIT

On Saturday and Sunday, April 12–13, 2008, the Department of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology held a Celebration of Women in Mathematics at MIT. The conference— co-sponsored by the MIT School of Science and the National Science Foundation—was instigated by Susan Landau, a 1983 Ph.D. alumna of the department, who asked mathematics department head Michael Sipser to organize a formal event to recognize MIT’s role as a leading educator of women mathematicians. The organizing committee for the conference, headed up by Gigliola Staffilani and Katrin Wehrheim of the MIT math department, included Bonnie Berger—MIT professor of applied mathematics and a 1990 Ph.D. alumna in computer science—together with Susan Landau and three other MIT math alumnae: Lenore Blum (Ph.D. 1968), Ana Cannas da Silva (Ph.D. 1996), and Susan Colley (Ph.D. 1983). The MIT celebration featured seven colloquium talks on topics in pure and applied mathematics, as well as two panels devoted to the mathematical lives of MIT women alumnae and faculty members: “Life Now: Becoming and Being a Mathematician”, and “Life Back Then: Graduates of the Sixties, Seventies, and Early Eighties”. In addition, alumnus Ken Fan (Ph.D. 1995) introduced Girls’ Angle, a math club for Cambridge-area middle-school girls, on Saturday afternoon; MIT President Susan Hockfield and School of Science Dean Marc Kastner hosted a buffet supper on Saturday evening. Seeking broader historical context for the mathematical achievements of women at MIT, the conference organizers graciously invited me to give an hour talk at lunch on Sunday. I also agreed to cover the conference for the Notices as a participant-observer. Because my only connection to MIT comes by way of MIT Press, my account interweaves historical elements from my presentation with my observations as both insider and outsider to the proceedings. Table 1 provides an alphabetical list of speakers and panelists. The full schedule of the conference, including slides and references, is now online at http://www-math. mit.edu/womeninmath/schedule.html.