Mathematicians From The United States

"After completing the my undergraduate studies at Xavier University of Louisiana, I went to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) to earn my doctorate. In 2008, I was one of the first two African-American women to earn a doctoral degree in Mathematics from UNL."

"My thesis is this thing that was initially going to be a grenade launched at my ex-prison, for better or for worse, and instead turned into some kind of positive seed bomb where flowers have sprouted beside the foundations I thought I wanted to crumble."

"I was awarded a National Physical Science Consortium fellowship to pursue graduate studies in mathematics and earned my M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. After graduate school, I completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Environmental Protection Agency in the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina."

"There’s a thinking that lends well to doing mathematics. Mathematicians have to be precise in their thinking and they have to be good at analyzing definitions and proofs. In fact, even when mathematicians"

"I always had an affinity for mathematics. As a child I was always interested in studying patterns, working on puzzles, and solving logic problems; and I was very intrigued by the various ways in which mathematics showed up in everyday life. While in junior high school"

"My thesis is that thing I got sick of just when I should have been fine-tuning its organization. It’s where I find typos that have already gone to print. I am a writer; don’t ask me about my writing."

"My current research focuses on oscillation criteria for certain linear and nonlinear second order dynamic equations. While I am also interested in applications of time scales to biology, economics, and statistics, I have a keen interest in increasing the number women, especially those underrepresented, in STEM and improving the undergraduate preparation of mathematics majors."

"All too often in the MATH community, because of its traditions, a common sentiment is one that unless you are tenure-track faculty, you’re not a good mathematician. It took time…but I got over that nonsense. I wanted to do something different with my mathematics. I went BIG."

"When I finished my PhD, there didn’t seem to be a shortage of academic jobs. You might not get a position at Research I institution, but you could find a tenure-track position at a pretty decent institution and be happy."

"I still see colleges and universities hiring for these positions, but when comparing the number of open positions to the number of Ph.D. graduates annually…there are not enough academic jobs. So what to do? I recommend considering jobs outside academia."

"I am very proud of all the students that I have taught, supervised in research or summer programs, or mentored over my 35-plus years as a faculty member at Spelman College, a place that supported me through enough different roles and opportunities that I enjoyed going to work every day."

"I don't know how much I helped but he gave me credit on the paper. That was a boost to my ego and really got me going in math."

"That was the one course that didn't come easily, let's put it that way."

"Male faculty tend to be less sensitive to the ways in which women treat their studies."

"Until a few years ago, I was a “wayward” mathematician. I thought all I could do was teach and I wanted out. While teaching is noble and one of the highest callings, I wanted to do something other than my tenure-track position."

"I didn't know they lay of the land," quips Bozeman. They wanted her to go back to school to finish her Ph.D. She just looked at them thinking, I have a husband and two small children, how am I going to go back to Vanderbilt four hours away?"

"Women make a B on an exam and they are crushed, they think it's terrible. Men make a B and they think it's great."

"I grew up on a small farm in Camp Hill, Alabama, with my four siblings. My elementary school education took place in a one-room school house in my community. Although my love of mathematics was passed down from my mother, both of my parents instilled in me a love of learning and a concern for the education of others."

"During my time at AT&T I learned the importance of mentoring. I have mentored hundreds of people over my career, first at AT&T and, more recently, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), where I continued my career after leaving AT&T. I am very proud of the impact I have had on the careers of so many people."

"My mother only finished the 12th grade but she was always excited about math."

"For a long time, I wanted to be a math teacher, but in high school I started to think about working in jobs where I could “apply” mathematics (though I only had a vague idea of what that meant)."

"In 1980 I joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, NJ. Eventually I had a 25- year career at Bell Laboratories and, after the breakup of the Bell System, AT&T Laboratories."

"My math teacher, Mr. Frank Holly, would not let me stop doing math."

"Now don’t get me wrong, I knew mathematicians did more than teach. But personally, I had not done a lot of applied mathematical work. Nothing wrong with it, I just hadn’t. (My area of research was a branch of Combinatorics called Matroid Theory.) However, when I started looking I found all kinds of employment opportunities."

"I grew up in 1960’s in Winston Salem, NC. in a low-income, single parent household. At the time, the schools in Winston-Salem were segregated but, due primarily to the dedication of my teachers and my own motivation"

"I received a very strong public school education. For as long as I can remember, even before I started school, I had a love for mathematics. I think there was something about both the logic of math and the fact that in math there was a “right answer” that appealed to me (clearly before I knew about stochastic mathematics)."

"I believed I was where I was supposed to be. When I was a student, my mentor told me I’d make a good research mathematician. I said, “What is that?” and he told me I’d have to find out for myself. At NASA, I happened to be at the right place at the right time. When you put bright people in a room and they had something to do, they worked on it until they got it done. But honestly, it was never work to me."

"It’s just there. You can’t do anything without it. It’s in everything. I like to work problems. If you do your best, nobody can ask you to do it over again. I never had to repeat what I did."

"We put in some long hours at times, and I had three children at home. But they were very responsible, and I had family and friends who helped look after them."

"But then we’d be back with our colleagues on the job. People are people. My father’s advice helped. He said, “You’re no better than anybody else, but nobody is better than you.”"

"In the cafeteria, we just ignored the sign [for segregated seating]. But at some point, we started eating at our desks. When we left work, our lives were definitely separate — separate communities, separate schools for our children, separate grocery stores and churches."

"I was always interested in math. I counted everything as a child — the number of steps up the stairs, the dishes, the steps to church. Those thoughts just came naturally. While I skipped grades in school, my parents made sure I stayed grounded."

"I’ve spent a lot of time tutoring kids in math as a volunteer. I’ve always enjoyed helping people understand what they can find in math. There’s no judgment there."

"English Quotation"

"Cook’s theory has a special meaning to mathematical logic since Cook’s theory can be viewed as a branch of recursion theory. Freeman Dyson wrote a fantastic article in the 1980s, which recorded the story of how Gödel insisted on his “Unfashionable pursuits” in logic. In fact, when (computer science) people were talking about the unfairness of the late appointment of professorship to Gödel in the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Stephen Cook reinstated the dignity of mathematical logic."

"One should mention right at the start that one still does not understand whether quantum mechanics and special relativity are compatible at a fundamental level in our Minkowski four-space world. One generally assumes that this means finding a complete Yang-Mills gauge theory or the interaction of gauge fields with fermionic matter fields, the simplest form being quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Associated with this picture is the belief that the fundamental vector meson excitations are massive (as opposed to photons, which arise in the limiting case of an abelian gauge symmetry. The proof of the existence of a “mass gap” appears a necessary integral part of solving the entire puzzle. This question remains one of the deepest open issues in theoretical physics, as well as in mathematics. Basically the question remains: can one give a mathematical foundation to the theory of fields in four-dimensions? In other words, can do quantum mechanics and special relativity lie on the same footing as the classical physics of Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, or Schrödinger—all of which fits into a mathematical framework that we describe as the language of physics. This glaring gap in our fundamental knowledge even dwarfs questions of whether there are other more complicated and sophisticated approaches to physics—those that incorporate gravity, strings, or branes—for understanding their fundamental significance lies far in the future. In fact, one believes that stringy proposals, if they can be fully implemented, have limiting cases that appear as relativistic quantum fields, just as relativistic quantum fields describe non-relativistic quantum theory and classical physics in various limiting cases."

"New challenges driven by evolving global technology inspire fresh trends and approaches in teaching statistics in business schools of the 21st century."

"[W]ith its unique construction—there are never any air leaks."

"[I]f folks don’t like the idea once they’ve given it the once-over, we’ll be glad to buy the plans back at the full $15.00 purchase price."

"[T]he company's newest product, "Big Fin" water heaters... can be placed inside a greenhouse or other glass enclosed area. After its copper pipes have been heated by the sun, the water... flows to an elevated heating tank by... natural convection and the cool water at the bottom of the tank flows back... There's no electric pump. The cost... $850."

"The company... manufactures... "skylids" (insulated shutters for skylights that open and close with the sun) and "beadwalls" (double pain windows that fill and drain with beads to let the sun in or keep the cold out)."

"According to Baer... the best solar ideas come from people who are taking a chance—"and not just drawing a salary.""

"You don't need to have a [government energy] policy... there already is a policy—it's each individual's policy. We need the government for some things like the armed forces, but not in the marketplace."

"ZW is a privately owned corporation. We are not supported by federal grants. We depend on your business for support."

"We don't have a shortage of fuel... gas is still cheap and we have an abundance of coal and uranium. The goals might encourage energy conservation—but it would aid in energy conservation if we all dropped dead, too. Energy conservation is not an end in itself—no one really gives a damn about energy conservation—it's happiness that people are concerned with."

"[C]oal, oil and natural gas are all solar energy products... and hydroelectric power is solar energy..."

"The tendency is not to care about spending somebody else's money—so even at this time when we're supposed to be conserving energy we're instituting policies that make people conserve less."

"We've gone too far in letting the government into our affairs..."

"This tabloid contains the crystallographic theory and junkyard practice behind Baer's domes: from how to distort a polyhedron without affecting connector angles to how to chop out a car without losing your foot. ...Baer's theory is unique in architecture. So is his practice; instead of dying of dissertation dry rot, his notions stand around in the world bugging the citizens."

"The Dome Cookbook is published by Lama Foundation, an intentional community in New Mexico, built largely of Baer domes."