CWM has awarded 10 new grants from €2000o to €3000 for regional activities for women in mathematics in 2018. See here.
News from CWM
Suggestions for CWM News can be sent to cwm.info@mathunion.org.
#WIKI4WOMEN World Contributory Movement
#WIKI4WOMEN World Contributory Movement
THURSDAY 8 MARCH Celebration of International Women’s Day 2018
Only 17% of profiles on Wikipedia are of women
Let's bridge the gender gap in the digital spacel
The #WIKI4WOMEN initiative calls everyone to take few minutes (from 30 minutes) of their time to create, enrich or translate, in as many languages as possible, Wikipedia portraits of women committed in the fields of education, science, culture, social and human sciences, or communication and information. See more here.
It is possible to contribute in several languages.
CWM 2018 Grants awarded
Nouzha El Yacoubi First Woman to Become President of the African Mathematical Union
Nouzha El Yacoubi was elected President of the African Mathematical Union (AMU) in July 2017 for the period of 2017-2021. She is the first woman to hold this position.
Nouzha El Yacoubi was the first woman to become Secretary General of the AMU from 2004-2009 and she chaired the AMU Commission on Pan African Mathematics Olympiads from 1995 to 2009. The nomination as President of the AMU is the crowning achievement of a brilliant career of research and service.
Nouzha El Yacoubi, President of the African Mathematical Union
Women at the Top in UK Maths Societies
For the first time ever, three of the five learned mathematics societies in the UK are concurrently led by female presidents: Caroline Series is President of The London Mathematical Society, Ruth Kaufman is President of the Operational Research Society, and Ineke De Moortel is President of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society.
New Endowed Graduate Fellowship Established in Honor of Maryam Mirzakhani
We are delighted to announce an $800,000 gift pledge from distinguished engineers and entrepreneurs Dr. Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard and Anousheh Ansari to establish an endowed graduate fellowship in honor of our late colleague, Professor of Mathematics Maryam Mirzakhani (1977-2017). The Maryam Mirzakhani Graduate Fellowship will support graduate students in the Department of Mathematics at Stanford.
Christiane Rousseau wins AMS Bertrand Russell Prize!
Christiane Rousseau, Université de Montréal, receives the inaugural Bertrand Russell Prize of the AMS in recognition of her many contributions furthering human values and the common good through mathematics.
Throughout her career, Professor Rousseau has inspired people of all ages and diverse backgrounds through her lectures, publications, and a wide range of activities reaching out to the general public. In particular, through her visionary leadership of the thematic year Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013 and her continuing active involvement in the ongoing activities that grew from it, Professor Rousseau has created opportunities for the mathematics community worldwide to confront crucial challenges facing our planet while highlighting the contributions of mathematicians to the well-being of society.
Christiane served as president of the Canadian Mathematical Society from 2002 to 2004, vice president of the International Mathematical Union from 2011 to 2014, and has been a member of the Scientific Board of UNESCO’s International Basic Sciences Program since 2015. She was named an AMS Fellow in 2013 and won the MAA’s George Pólya Prize in 2014 for her article “How Inge Lehmann Discovered the Inner Core of the Earth” (The College Mathematics Journal, Vol. 45, no. 3).
Congratulations Christaine!
(WM)²: World Meeting for Women in Mathematics – Registration Now Open
The IMU Committee for Women in Mathematics (CWM) welcomes the mathematical community to the (WM)²: World Meeting for Women in Mathematics, a satellite event of the ICM 2018.
Registration is now open.
The (WM)² will bring together mathematicians from all over the world to think about and discuss gender issues in mathematics, its challenges, initiatives, and perspectives for the future, with a strong focus on Latin America.
The (WM)² will take place at Riocentro convention center on July 31, 2018 (the same venue as the ICM). Its program includes research talks, group discussions about gender issues in mathematics, a panel discussion and poster presentation. There will also be a tribute to Maryam Mirzakhani.
CWM Call 2018
CWM invites proposals for funding of up to €3000 for activities or initiatives taking place in 2018, aimed at either (a) establishing or supporting networks for women in mathematics, preferably at the continental or regional level, and with priority given to networks in developing or emerging countries or (b) organizing a mathematical school open to all with all women speakers and mainly women organisers or (c) other ideas for researching and/or addressing issues encountered by women in mathematics. For more details see here.
Maryam Mirzakhani memorial celebration
There will be a memorial celebration of the life of Maryam Mirzakhani on Saturday, October 21st, 3:00-5:00 pm in the Cemex Auditorium, Stanford University. It is being organized by the Stanford Mathematics Department, with the guidance of Jan Vondrak and the rest of Maryam’s family.
The ceremony will feature reminiscences from family and friends, including some of Maryam’s mathematical colleagues. It is also expected that there will be visual and musical presentations, reflecting her life and interests.
The event will be open to the public, live streamed, and the video later posted online.
The link for the live stream is here.
Latin American Oaxaca meeting on Youtube
Watch the great new video of the meeting Women in Mathematics in Latin America: Barriers, Advancements and New Perspectives held in Oaxaca, Mexico, August 2016.
Even if you don’t speak Spanish you can find much to enjoy!
The meeting was hosted by the Casa Matemática Oaxaca in collaboration with the Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery, and part sponsored by CWM.
Marina Ratner passes away
Another great female mathematician, Marina Ratner, passed away on July 7th, 2017. Marina played in a key role in linking up the Russian and western schools of dynamical systems and later became famous for her beautiful theorems on unipotent flows on homogeneous spaces, and their application to questions in number theory, see for example on the blog by Terence Tao here.
The following is taken from the UC Berkeley website:
Marina Ratner Professor Emeritus passed away on July 7, 2017, at her home in El Cerrito, California. Professor Ratner was educated in Moscow, obtained her doctoral degree at the Moscow State University, emigrated to Israel in 1971, and joined the Berkeley Mathematics Department in 1975. Her work was mainly in ergodic theory and its connections with other parts of mathematics, and earned many honors, including the Ostrowski prize and the John J. Carty Award. She was a plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She was also an outstanding and beloved teacher and cared deeply about mathematics education.
She is survived by her daughter Anna Ratner, son-in-law Charles Cox, grandchildren Bryan and Maya, and nephews Michael Bialy (a Professor of Mathematics at Tel Aviv University) and Alex Bialy.
Gender Gap Project Website Launched
The CWM led Gender Gap Project has just launched its own website with news and up to date information.
Maryam Mirzakhani passes away
We are very deeply saddened by the news that Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to win the Fields medal, passed away today, Saturday July 15th 2017, at the age of 40.
A brilliant mathematician, she has been an inspiration to so many. She will be sorely missed. Our condolences to her family and friends.
Her beautiful mathematics will stand as a memorial long after those of us who have had the privilege of knowing her personally are gone.
Various links with tributes and information on her life and career can be found on the EWM website here.
For a page of tributes set up by the AMS see here.
Here is an interview with Maryam in the Guardian from August 2014, together with some more links and here is an obituary by Martin Bridson, July 2017.
A very nice and informative interview by Erica Klarreich which appeared in Quanta magazine in 2014 is here.
Iranian Women Mathematicians First Meeting
The Iranian Women’s section of the Iranian Mathematical Society will be holding its first meeting on August 21, 2017, in Bu-Ali Sina University which is in Hamedan, a city in the west of Iran.
The meeting is open to all Iranian Women Mathematicians. It is sponsored by CWM.
For more details see the report here (page 9), email contact: w.iranmath@ims.ir, poster here.
Call for Mittag Leffler summer school
EWM and the EMS Women in Mathematics Committee are pleased to invite proposals for a one week summer school at the Institut Mittag Leffler in Stockholm in summer 2018.
There are places for up to 28 participants. The Institut will cover lodging and a meal allowance for everyone, and there is some travel money available. The school should be on a
focussed topic of current importance and open to PhD students and post-docs of both sexes.
A special feature of the summer school is that there will be a much larger than usual involvement by women. We expect that most or all of the members of the organising committee, at least half the participants, and if possible the lecturers, should be female.
The exact dates will have to be negotiated with the Institut. The EMS is supportive of this project and it is expected that some funding for travel will be available. Help and advice will be available
from the Oversight Committee.
Proposals, which should be framed according to the guidelines (see attached), should be sent electronically as a pdf file to secretary@mittag-leffler.se with a copy
to tillmann@maths.ox.ac.uk by 30 July 2017. They will be selected on the basis of their scientific merit and the extent to which they fulfill the aims of the guidelines2018.
Ulrike Tillmann
Chair of the Oversight Committee