Skip to main content

CWM News

Suggestions for CWM News can be sent to cwm.info@mathunion.org.
CWM News Archives can be found here


Maryna Viazovska wins Fields medal

Ukraine

We are absolutely delighted to congratulate Maryna Viazovska on her achievement in being  awarded the Fields medal  "for the proof that the E8 lattice provides the densest packing of identical spheres in 8 dimensions, and further contributions to related extremal problems and interpolation problems in Fourier analysis".  See here.

 

Georgia Benkart passes away

University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin
United States

Georgia Benkart  (December 30, 1947 – April 29, 2022) was known for her work in the structure and representation theory of Lie algebras and related algebraic structures.  A tribute to her contributions to her field, "Gems from the Work of Georgia Benkart", appeared in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society. 

She was elected and served as president of the Association for Women in Mathematics from 2009 to 2011. In 2014 at the International Congress of Mathematicians held in Seoul, she delivered the ICM Emmy Noether Lecture.

Georgia Benkart collaborated with CWM in several occasions. In particular, she was the chair of the (WM)² 2018 program committee, and one of the editors of its Proceedings. We will miss her.

Collected Georgia Benkart Remembrances

Fifty Years of Women in Mathematics

Association for Women in Mathematics
United States

Fifty Years of Women in Mathematics
Reminiscences, History, and Visions for the Future of AWM
Editors : Janet L. BeerySarah J. GreenwaldCathy Kessel

Celebrates fifty years of the oldest association for women in mathematics in the world
Features contributions from a large and varied array of people in mathematics
Provides a historical chronology and reminiscences of AWM from its inception through present day

Part of the Association for Women in Mathematics Series book series (AWMS, volume 28), Springer, Cham

The article International Initiatives for Women Mathematicians by Marie-Françoise Roy and Caroline Series contained in the volume is describing the creation and initiatives of CWM.

 

OAL Prize established

The year 2022 marks the 100th birthday of Olga Alexandrovna Ladyzhenskaya. To celebrate this event and honor her, the Ladyzhenskaya Prize in Mathematical Physics (OAL Prize) was established. It will be awarded, in its inaugural edition, during the OAL celebration, a joint session organized by (WM)² 2022, the World Meeting for Women in Mathematics  and the Probability and Mathematical Physics ICM satellite event, on July  2 2022 from 10 am to 12:30 am CEST=UTC+2 in Helsinki.

May 12, a Celebration for Women in Mathematics, year 2022

May 12 was chosen for the Celebration of Women in Mathematics because it is the birthdate of Maryam Mirzakhani. The initiative was  proposed by the Women's Committee of the Iranian Mathematical Society and voted by a vast majority of attendees to (WM)², the World Meeting for Women on Mathematics on last July 31 in Rio.

Several suggestions for local activities around May 12 are listed here.   May12 Initiative recommands free screening of the award-winning film "Women in science in Africa, A SILENT REVOLUTION" available (in english or in french) online here : womeninscienceinafrica.com/film. Please feel free to organize one and decalre it on May 12 website.

The initiative is  supported by several organisations for women in mathematics worldwide (European Women in Mathematics, Association for Women in Mathematics, African Women in Mathematics Association, Indian Women and Mathematics,  CGD-UMALCA (Comisión de Género y Diversidad de Unión Matemática de América Latina y el Caribe) and the Women's Committee of the Iranian Mathematical Society).

More information here.

Condolences– Yulia Zdanovska

Kharkiv
Ukraine

The International Mathematical Union Committee for Women in Mathematics (CWM)  deeply regrets the death of 21-year-old Yulia Zdanovska, who was a silver medalist at the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiads (EGMO) in 2017. Yulia was a brilliant young mathematician with a successful future ahead of her. The young woman refused to leave Ukraine amid the war and, working as a volunteer, died in a fire caused by a Russian missile that hit her residential area in the eastern city of Kharkiv. CWM expresses its sympathy  with the family and the math community as a whole, united in mourning and honoring Yulia.

(WM)² will take place virtually on July 1-2 2022

With the recent tragic developments, and IMU's decisions about the ICM 2022 (see here  and here), the second edition of the World Meeting for Women in Mathematics - (WM)^2 - becomes a fully virtual event taking place on July 1-2 2022. The (WM)² was originally planned to take place on July 5, 2022, the day prior to the ICM 2022.  The date changed to accommodate the Ceremony for the IMU Prizes (Fields Medal, Abacus Medal, Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize, Chern Medal Award and Leelavati Prize), taking place on July 5, 2022.