Interview with a mathematician: Ingrid Daubechies
Ingrid Daubechies is the James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University. Her doctoral work was in physics, focusing on the mathematics of quantum mechanics. She is best known for her discovery of compactly supported continuous wavelets, now called Daubechies wavelets. Her work has found broad application to signal and image processing,…
Emmy Noether’s statue?
Non-existence theorem There is no statue of Emmy Noether. Yes, she’s had a Google doodle. Yes, there is a bust of her in the Hall of Fame in Munich. But no statue. To those who don’t know, Noether was one of the most influential of twentieth century mathematicians. She accomplished ground-breaking work in abstract algebra, and had a…
Get thee to a nunnery… and study math
Sisterhood of Mathematics My grade 11 Physics teacher was a nun. Thinking back, she reminded me of the famed mathematician Emmy Noether: she was big framed, wore simple clothes (no habit in class, however), and didn’t wear make-up. I think my classmates were frightened of her, but I wasn’t and she liked me. Maybe we were kindred spirits: my passion for…
Math anxiety and gender
Math anxiety We have all experienced anxiety studying mathematics. Some go so far to call it math phobia. I experience anxiety when first grappling with a mathematical research problem. My anxiety, however, turns to excitement as I work on the problem and make progress towards its solution. I have an advantage that comes from years of experience: I can see the light…