Celebratio Mathematica

Geor­gia was my teach­er, ment­or, Ph.D. ad­visor, col­lab­or­at­or, and friend, and I have no doubt that I would not be where I am without her help, en­cour­age­ment, and in­spir­a­tion.

Geor­gia cared deeply about her teach­ing. Wheth­er it be cal­cu­lus or lin­ear al­gebra or a gradu­ate course in af­fine Lie al­geb­ras, each class was care­fully craf­ted, beau­ti­fully de­livered, and full of puns and wit.

After her re­tire­ment from teach­ing in 2007, Geor­gia and I began a re­newed col­lab­or­a­tion. Among my fa­vor­ite pro­fes­sion­al mo­ments were vis­its to see her and her sis­ter Paula in Madis­on for math­em­at­ics and fun. We told stor­ies, did math, ate ex­cel­lent food from their kit­chen, and shared a beer or two.

She had an in­cred­ible wit. This in­cluded many (pain­fully en­joy­able) puns in­volving the names Schur and Lie. She cre­at­ively gave her plen­ary talk on Schur–Weyl du­al­ity the title, “A Tale of Two Groups,” and ref­er­enced Dick­ens throughout. We or­gan­ized a spe­cial ses­sion on walks on graphs which she had the bril­liant idea to name, “Walk the Walk, Talk the Talk.”

Geor­gia’s ment­or­ship ex­ten­ded way bey­ond those who were her of­fi­cial stu­dents. She no­ticed people in need of help mak­ing their way through the pro­fes­sion and provided quiet yet power­ful guid­ance. She in­spired an en­tire gen­er­a­tion of math­em­aticians, lead­ing by ex­ample and work­ing with hu­mil­ity, kind­ness, care, joy, and hu­man­ity.