Misplaced Pages

#448551

36-510: The Leroy P. Steele Prizes are awarded every year by the American Mathematical Society , for distinguished research work and writing in the field of mathematics . Since 1993, there has been a formal division into three categories. The prizes have been given since 1970, from a bequest of Leroy P. Steele , and were set up in honor of George David Birkhoff , William Fogg Osgood and William Caspar Graustein . The way

72-684: A Diophantine equation has any solutions in integers . Robinson began exploring methods for this problem in 1948 while at the RAND Corporation . Her work regarding Diophantine representation for exponentiation and her method of using Pell's equation led to the J.R. hypothesis (named after Robinson) in 1950. Proving this hypothesis would be central in the eventual solution. Her research publications would lead to collaborations with Martin Davis , Hilary Putnam , and Yuri Matiyasevich . In 1950, Robinson first met Martin Davis, then an instructor at

108-547: A national society in 1894, and that year Scott became the first woman on the first Council of the society. In 1927 Anna Pell-Wheeler became the first woman to present a lecture at the society's Colloquium. In 1951 there was a southeastern sectional meeting of the Mathematical Association of America in Nashville . The citation delivered at the 2007 MAA awards presentation, where Lee Lorch received

144-490: A prize problem at RAND Corporation . Robinson was not allowed to teach in the Mathematics Department at Berkeley after marrying Raphael M. Robinson in 1941, as there was a rule that prevented family members from working together in the same department. Robinson then instead stayed in the statistics department despite wanting to teach calculus. Although Raphael retired in 1973, it was not until 1976 she

180-689: A research thesis. In the 1970s, as reported in "A Brief History of the Association for Women in Mathematics : The Presidents' Perspectives" by Lenore Blum , "In those years the AMS was governed by what could only be called an 'old boys network,' closed to all but those in the inner circle." Mary W. Gray challenged that situation by "sitting in on the Council meeting in Atlantic City. When she

216-602: A standing ovation, recorded that: Also in 1951, the American Mathematical Society's headquarters moved from New York City to Providence, Rhode Island . The society later added an office in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1965 and an office in Washington, D.C. in 1992. In 1954 the society called for the creation of a new teaching degree, a Doctor of Arts in Mathematics, similar to a PhD but without

252-613: A woman and a mathematician I had no alternative but to accept. I have always tried to do everything I could to encourage talented women to become research mathematicians. I found my service as president of the Society taxing but very, very satisfying." In 1982, Robinson gave the Noether Lecture of the Association for Women in Mathematics ; her lecture was called Functional Equations in Arithmetic. Around this time she also

288-591: The Journal of the American Mathematical Society was created, as the flagship journal of the AMS. The AMS, along with more than a dozen other organizations, holds the largest annual research mathematics meeting in the world, the Joint Mathematics Meeting , in early January. The 2019 Joint Mathematics Meeting in Baltimore drew approximately 6,000 attendees. Each of the four regional sections of

324-566: The Mathematical Association of America 's George Pólya Award in 1987 for writing the article "The Autobiography of Julia Robinson". The Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival , sponsored by the American Institute of Mathematics from 2013 to the present and by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute from 2007 to 2013, was named in her honor. George Csicsery produced and directed

360-467: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , who was trying to show that all sets with listability property were Diophantine in contrast to Robinson's attempt to show that a few special sets—including prime numbers and the powers of 2—were Diophantine. Robinson and Davis started collaborating in 1959 and were later joined by Hilary Putnam, they then showed that the solutions to a “Goldilocks” equation

396-448: The AMS (Central, Eastern, Southeastern, and Western) holds meetings in the spring and fall of each year. The society also co-sponsors meetings with other international mathematical societies. The AMS selects an annual class of Fellows who have made outstanding contributions to the advancement of mathematics. The AMS publishes Mathematical Reviews , a database of reviews of mathematical publications, various journals, and books. In 1997

SECTION 10

#1732765177449

432-584: The AMS acquired Chelsea Publishing Company , which it uses as an imprint. In 2017, the AMS acquired MAA Press, the book publishing program of the Mathematical Association of America . The AMS has continued to publish books under the MAA Press imprint. Journals: Proceedings and Collections: Some prizes are awarded jointly with other mathematical organizations. See specific articles for details. The AMS creates outreach materials aimed at middle school, high school, and college students. These include: The AMS

468-477: The Hamiltonian game (a traveling salesman problem)," is the first publication to use the phrase " travelling salesman problem ". Shortly thereafter she published a paper called " An Iterative Method of Solving a Game " in 1951. In her paper, she proved that the fictitious play dynamics converges to the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium in two-player zero-sum games . This was posed by George W. Brown as

504-507: The National Academy of Sciences why her work is so important and how it tremendously contributed to mathematics. In 1975, she was the first female mathematician to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Robinson was chosen as the first female president of the American Mathematical Society (for the term of 1983–1984) but was unable to complete her term as she was suffering from leukemia . It took time for her to accept

540-437: The daughter of Ralph Bowers Bowman and Helen (Hall) Bowman. Her father owned a machine equipment company while her mother was a school teacher before marriage. Her mother died when Robinson was 2 years old and her father remarried. Her older sister was the mathematical popularizer and biographer Constance Reid and her younger sister is Billie Comstock. When she was 9 years old, she was diagnosed with scarlet fever, which

576-724: The interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, advocacy and other programs. The society is one of the four parts of the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics and a member of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences . The AMS was founded in 1888 as the New York Mathematical Society , the brainchild of Thomas Fiske , who

612-432: The nomination, as stated in her autobiography: "In 1982 I was nominated for the presidency of the American Mathematical Society. I realized that I had been chosen because I was a woman and because I had the seal of approval, as it were, of the National Academy. After discussion with Raphael, who thought I should decline and save my energy for mathematics, and other members of my family, who differed with him, I decided that as

648-420: The only female student taking advanced classes in mathematics and physics. She graduated high school with a Bausch-Lomb award for being overall outstanding in science. In 1936, Robinson entered San Diego State University at the age of 16. Dissatisfied with the mathematics curriculum at San Diego State University, she transferred to University of California, Berkeley in 1939 for her senior year. Before she

684-563: The prizes are awarded was changed in 1976 and 1993, but the initial aim of honoring expository writing as well as research has been retained. The prizes of $ 5,000 are not given on a strict national basis, but relate to mathematical activity in the USA, and writing in English (originally, or in translation). American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society ( AMS ) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to

720-414: The process of democratization of the Society had begun." Also, in 1971 the AMS established its Joint Committee on Women in the Mathematical Sciences (JCW), which later became a joint committee of multiple scholarly societies. Julia Robinson was the first female president of the American Mathematical Society (1983–1984), but was unable to complete her term as she was suffering from leukemia . In 1988,

756-517: The same parameters but in only N unknowns such that both equations are solvable or unsolvable for the same values of the parameters. At the time the solution was first published, the authors established N = 200. Robinson and Matiyasevich's joint work would produce further reduction to 9 unknowns. During the late 1940s, Robinson spent a year or so at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica researching game theory. Her 1949 technical report, "On

SECTION 20

#1732765177449

792-558: The strategic direction of the board of trustees. This article incorporates material from American Mathematical Society on PlanetMath , which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License . 41°50′14″N 71°24′44″W  /  41.8372°N 71.4123°W  / 41.8372; -71.4123 Julia Robinson Robinson was born in St. Louis , Missouri ,

828-403: The theory of the rational numbers was an undecidable problem , by demonstrating that elementary number theory could be defined in terms of the rationals. (Elementary number theory was already known to be undecidable by Gödel's first incompleteness theorem .) Here is an excerpt from her thesis: "This consequence of our discussion is interesting because of a result of Gödel which shows that

864-481: The variety of relations between integers (and operations on integers) which are arithmetically definable in terms of addition and multiplication of integers is very great. For instance from Theorem 3.2 and Gödel's result, we can conclude that the relation which holds between three rationals A , B , and N if and only if N is a positive integer and A = B is definable in the arithmetic of rationals." Hilbert's tenth problem asks for an algorithm to determine whether

900-421: Was able to transfer to UC Berkeley, her father committed suicide in 1937 due to financial insecurities. She took five mathematics courses in her first year at Berkeley, one being a number theory course taught by Raphael M. Robinson . She received her BA degree in 1940, and later married Raphael in 1941. After graduating, Robinson continued in graduate studies at Berkeley. As a graduate student, Robinson

936-551: Was an early advocate of the typesetting program TeX , requiring that contributions be written in it and producing its own packages AMS-TeX and AMS-LaTeX . TeX and LaTeX are now ubiquitous in mathematical publishing. The AMS is led by the President, who is elected for a two-year term, and cannot serve for two consecutive terms. The AMS has an executive director who sits at the helm of the organization, steering it, managing its operations, and carrying out its mission according to

972-594: Was diagnosed with leukemia , and she died in Oakland, California , on July 30, 1985. "One of Julia’s last requests was that there be no funeral service and that those wishing to make a gift in her memory contribute to the Alfred Tarski Fund, which she had been instrumental in setting up in honor of her late teacher, friend, and colleague. Modest to the end, she let her character and achievements speak for themselves." One of her sisters, Constance Reid , won

1008-592: Was employed as a teaching assistant with the Department of Mathematics and later as a statistics lab assistant by Jerzy Neyman in the Berkeley Statistical Laboratory, where her work resulted in her first published paper, titled " A Note on Exact Sequential Analysis" . Robinson received her PhD degree in 1948 under Alfred Tarski with a dissertation on "Definability and Decision Problems in Arithmetic". Her dissertation showed that

1044-612: Was given the MacArthur Fellowship prize of $ 60,000. In 1985, she also became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In the 1950s Robinson was active in local Democratic party activities. She was Alan Cranston 's campaign manager in Contra Costa County when he ran for his first political office, state controller. "I don’t remember exactly what happened, but the end result

1080-644: Was impressed by the London Mathematical Society on a visit to England. John Howard Van Amringe became the first president while Fiske became secretary. The society soon decided to publish a journal, but ran into some resistance over concerns about competing with the American Journal of Mathematics . The result was the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society , with Fiske as editor-in-chief. The de facto journal, as intended,

1116-669: Was influential in increasing membership. The popularity of the Bulletin soon led to the launches of the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society and Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society , which were also de facto journals. In 1891, Charlotte Scott of Britain became the first woman to join the AMS, then called the New York Mathematical Society. The society reorganized under its present name (American Mathematical Society) and became

Leroy P. Steele Prize - Misplaced Pages Continue

1152-464: Was key to Hilbert's tenth problem. In 1970, the problem was resolved in the negative; that is, they showed that no such algorithm can exist. Through the 1970s, Robinson continued working with Matiyasevich on one of their solution's corollaries, which she once stated that there is a constant N such that, given a Diophantine equation with any number of parameters and in any number of unknowns, one can effectively transform this equation into another with

1188-558: Was offered a full-time professorship position at Berkeley after the department heard of her nomination to the National Academy of Sciences . After Yuri Matiyasevich solved Hilbert's tenth problem by means of the J.R. hypothesis and the Fibonacci number sequence, Saunders Mac Lane nominated Robinson for the National Academy of Sciences. Alfred Tarski and Jerzy Neyman also flew out to Washington, D.C. to further explain to

1224-579: Was shortly followed by rheumatic fever. This caused her to miss two years of school. When she was well again, she was privately tutored by a retired primary school teacher. In just one year, she was able to complete fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth year curriculum. While in junior high school, she was given an IQ test in which she scored a 98, a couple points below average, which she explains away as being "unaccustomed to taking tests." Nevertheless, Julia stood out in San Diego High School as

1260-475: Was that Julia involved herself during those years in the nitty-gritty of Democratic Party politics—she registered voters, stuffed envelopes, rang door- bells in neighborhoods where people expected to be paid for their vote. She even served as Alan Cranston’s campaign manager for Contra Costa County when he successfully ran for state controller—his first political office." Robinson was also a volunteer for Adlai Stevenson ’s presidential campaigns. In 1984, Robinson

1296-436: Was told she had to leave, she refused saying she would wait until the police came. (Mary relates the story somewhat differently: When she was told she had to leave, she responded she could find no rules in the by-laws restricting attendance at Council meetings. She was then told it was by 'gentlemen's agreement.' Naturally Mary replied 'Well, obviously I'm no gentleman.') After that time, Council meetings were open to observers and

#448551