The Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial

A nice thing to do in Knoxville (say, during a visit to @NIMBioS) is to go to Market Square and take a look at the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial.

Here is a short video, with a full view of the Memorial's historical text: https://t.co/EeWV57Jncyhttps://t.co/UShnfB3Px0

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) February 26, 2019

New Book: "Women in Mathematics"

The book Women in Mathematics (subtitled "Celebrating the Centennial of the Mathematical Association of America") is now available.

I was able to download it for free at UCLA, so this should also be the case at other universities with similar deals with the publisher (Springer).

Tales from the ArXiv: Visibility of Women in Academic Seminars

This paper presents the results of research on visibility of women in academic seminar question and answer period. Some takeaways include the length of the Q & A period and who asks the first post-seminar question.

Take a look at the data and suggestions, and see what you think.

Print and Play Cards: Women in Science

These print-and-play cards of Women in Science include some nice artwork and some very familiar names. My favorites are the mathematicians, of course.

A couple of years ago, I blogged about playing cards of Women in Computing.

'E' is for Erdmann

Entry 'E' in the A-to-Z series on women mathematicians in the Life Through a Mathematician's Eyes tumblr is my Somerville College colleague Karin Erdmann.

It should say "specializes" (present tense), by the way, as Karin is still research-active, even though she's retired. In fact, no doubt, she is now more active in her research, as that is how it often works.

As I write this, the tumblr has gotten up to 'M' so far, and there are many great mathematicians profiled (including, thankfully, people besides the same ones that often show up over and over again in such lists).

(Tip of the cap to Association for Women in Mathematics.)

"Women, Mathematics, and the Periodical Tradition in Britain: or a History of Women Rocking Math from the Beginning"

Jacqueline D. Wernimont has written a very cool blog post about The Ladies' Diary.

Here is a quote from her post that describes the publication venue:

"One way to look at it is as a chimeric text with the head of an almanac, the body of a literary-mathematical periodical, with commonplace wings and a tail of recipes. It is fantastic.

Without question, it is the first mathematical periodical in Britain and it was designed explicitly for women and was published as such for more than five generations."

Very cool!

(Tip of the cap to Rachel Levy.)

Today is International Ada Lovelace Day

Today is International Ada Lovelace Day!

Here are some blurbs about women in mathematics (and more generally in science and technology).

"Women in Computing" Playing Cards

You can buy (or freely download) these Notable Women in Computer Science playing cards.

(Tip of the cap to the Eight of Spades, who was our opening speaker in Somerville College's event today to celebrate women in computer science.)

Tenure, She Wrote

Tenure, She Wrote looks like a really useful blog by and about women in academia.

Here is the description on their website: Tenure, She Wrote is a collaborative blog devoted to chronicling the (mis)adventures of women in academia, from undergraduate to Full Professor. We’re a diverse group representing many walks of life, career stages, institutional affiliations, disciplines, and opinions.

(Tip of the cap to Rachel Levy.)

New Meme: #distractinglysexy

The new meme #distractinglysexy is a fantastic response to Tim Hunt's stupid comments.

Awesome Story: 102-Year-Old Women Sets Record for Oldest Ever Doctoral Recipient

This story is a great one: 102-year-old Ingeborg Rapoport has become the oldest ever recipient of a PhD after an old Nazi injustice is righted.

Of course, the reason behind the story is very unfortunate to say the least, but I love the story's ending. This is really awesome.

(Technically, she will be given the doctorate in a ceremony on 9 June. She has already successfully defended it.)

(Tip of the cap to A Mighty Girl.)

Update (6/10/15): Ingeborg Rapoport now officially has her doctorate.

Calling People Out: The All-Male Panel "Congratulations" Tumblr

I approve of this all-male panel tumblr that offers sarcastic congratulations. (And I am very much in favor of calling people out to try to encourage improving the situation on such matters.)

The David Hasselhoff picture is an added bonus.

(Tip of the cap to NetSci Backstage.)

The 'T' in the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam(-Tsingou) Problem

Today is International Women's Day, and today some venues (e.g., IFLS) are posting articles with the theme 'women you should have heard of' (‪#‎womenyoushouldhaveheardof‬), and I would like to contribute one who was intimately involved in introducing (and conducting subsequent studies of) one of my favorite mathematics/physics problems.

The lady in question is Mary Tsingou, and the problem is the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam(-Tsingou) problem.

Seven years ago, Thierry Dauxois wrote an opinion piece in Physics Today about the decades of omission of credit that Tsingou had experience. To quote his abstract, "The computations for the first-ever numerical experiment were performed by a young woman named Mary Tsingou. After decades of omission, it is time to recognize her contribution."

If you look at the original technical report, you'll notice typed text that indicates that the report was "written by" Fermi, Pasta, and Ulam but that "Work done by" credits Fermi, Pasta, Ulam, and Tsingou. Dauxois's paper discusses Mary Tsingou's contribution to the original technical report and advocates renaming the problem as the "FPUT" problem. Tsingou also worked on the FPU(T) problem later---e.g., on "superecurrences" that occur in very long-time calculations. For more information about the FPU(T) problem, see the Scholarpedia article devoted to it, a Scholarpedia article devoted to its mathematical aspects, and an expository article that I coauthored.

Tales from the ArXiv: "Addressing the Underrepresentation of Women in Mathematics Conferences"

I am passing along this paper concerning addressing the underrepresentation of women in mathematics conferences, given my very strong agreement with the following sentence from the abstract: We describe in detail the biases against women in mathematics, knowing that greater awareness of them leads to a better ability to mitigate them.

It's a long road, and "awareness" at least ought to be one of the easier parts that can help in tackling these challenges.

Here are some more details about the paper (which, from the text, apparently will be appearing in Notices of the AMS):

Title: Addressing the Underrepresentation of Women in Mathematics Conferences

Author: Greg Martin

Abstract: Despite significant improvements over the last few generations, the discipline of mathematics still counts a disproportionately small number of women among its practitioners. These women are underrepresented as conference speakers, even more so than the underrepresentation of women among PhD-earners as a whole. This underrepresentation is the result of implicit biases present within all of us, which cause us (on average) to perceive and treat women and men differently and unfairly. These mutually reinforcing biases begin in primary school, remain active through university study, and continue to oppose women's careers through their effects on hiring, evaluation, awarding of prizes, and inclusion in journal editorial boards and conference organization committees. Underrepresentation of women as conference speakers is a symptom of these biases, but it also serves to perpetuate them; therefore, addressing the inequity at conferences is valuable and necessary for countering this underrepresentation. We describe in detail the biases against women in mathematics, knowing that greater awareness of them leads to a better ability to mitigate them. Finally, we make explicit suggestions for organizing conferences in ways that are equitable for female mathematicians.


(Tip of the cap to Oxford Mathematics Good Practice​. Why do only 20 people 'like' their Facebook page? The last I checked, our department has many more than 20 people in it.)

Ada Lovelace Bicentenary: Celebrating Women in Computer Science

On 16 October 2015 (Friday, week 1, next Michaelmas term), we're going to have a symposium to celebrate women in computer science in honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ada Lovelace.

We've got some awesome speakers and potentially other surprises, so go take a look at the website! (And also say that you want to come, of course.)

Blog About Women Scientists from History

Here is a new blog about contributions of women scientists from history.

This is a really excellent idea, and I hope it leads to the contributions of these women becoming better known! I'm not a huge fan of the blog's title ("Science Chicks from History"), but I can appreciate the author making her own choice for her blog's tone. She writes the following about her new blog:

I’m just a nerdy science chick who decided to make a blog dedicated to women scientists from history. I wanted to learn more about these women and show that despite being excluded from science throughout much of history, many women still made important contributions to science.

Well done!

(Tip of the cap to Jaideep Singh.)

Emmy Noether in the New York Times

I cannot overstate how much it pleases me to see an article about mathematician Emmy Noether in a venue like the New York Times. (Not that the huge amount of time I have spent studying Hamiltonian systems makes me biased or anything. Somerville College is named after a female mathematician and used to be a women's College, so of course Emmy Noether is also somebody who I want my Somerville students to know about.)

(Tip of the cap to the MAA.)

Did this really happen?

While I was waiting for my drink at the airport Starbucks, she noticed my t-shirt and said to me indignantly "Nerd is a much better label than geek, even if you are using an html tag."

Perhaps this was a missed opportunity, but I was rather dizzy at the time and I wasn't in the mood for a conversation that started out with indignation.

As I'm sure you've guessed, "she" = a young lady, but it sounds much better with the pronoun because then it's easier to imagine it as a sentence in a novel.

(The quote is approximate, by the way.)

Me Being Myself

I just came back from G & D's, the local ice cream place across the street from Somerville. (There are two other locations---both in Oxford---but the one across the street is unsurprisingly the one I always go to.)

Upon entering I noticed a possibly-interesting woman, but then I noticed she was using what appeared to be one of the new (or at least reasonably new) Macintosh computers, and then I found myself to be far more interested in the computer specs than I was in her. What can I say---I have to be me. Then, in another example of me being myself, I immediately sat down somewhere and minded my own business (doing some reading from an issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society that has been lingering for several months). I laughed internally about the relative importance of these things in my thoughts, and I also quickly understood that I was perfectly at peace with this. I suppose I could do with not being so horribly shy, but I have been able to make some really good friends here, so I'm at least mostly (and sometimes---like today---completely) at peace with that as well.

Big in Japan

Eri Yoshida, age 17 and Japan's first female professional baseball player, made her debut on Friday in the newly-formed Kansai Independent League (which is basically a minor league). A knuckleball pitcher who grew up wanting to emulate Tim Wakefield, she picked up a strikeout. As Rob Neyer points out, her small size is probably going to be her largest hurdle, but this is still awesome and I hope she gets very far.