Celebratio Mathematica

(from an email to AWM mem­bers)

With great sor­row, we share with you news of the loss of Geor­gia Ben­k­art. Geor­gia was AWM Pres­id­ent from 2009-2011 and sup­por­ted AWM throughout her life, most re­cently as part of AWM’s 50th An­niversary Com­mit­tee and as a con­trib­ut­or to the AWM-Spring­er volume, Fifty Years of Wo­men in Math­em­at­ics.

Dur­ing Geor­gia’s term as Pres­id­ent, she helped to plan AWM’s 40th an­niversary cel­eb­ra­tion which launched the AWM Re­search Sym­po­sia, fought suc­cess­fully against a de­cision to re­move AWM prizes from the Joint Math­em­at­ics Meet­ings prize ses­sion, and brought AWM in­to the broad­er com­munity though par­ti­cip­a­tion in the USA Sci­ence and En­gin­eer­ing Fest­iv­al and the Na­tion­al Math­em­at­ics Fest­iv­al. Geor­gia was also an ex­traordin­ary re­search­er. Her work is beau­ti­fully sum­mar­ized in the March 2022 No­tices of the AMS art­icle, “Gems of the work of Geor­gia Ben­k­art”, by Tom Hal­ver­son and Ar­um Ram.

Geor­gia was the first AWM Pres­id­ent I met. While she was pres­id­ent, we were co-pan­el­ists for a work­shop for wo­men gradu­ate stu­dents hos­ted by the In­sti­tute for Math­em­at­ics and Ap­plic­a­tions. I was fairly new in a ten­ure-track po­s­i­tion at a pub­lic com­pre­hens­ive in­sti­tu­tion, and as­sumed I would not be of in­terest to a well-known math­em­atician at a top-ranked R1 in­sti­tu­tion. I can’t say for sure that I was of in­terest, but I can say she made me feel that way. Geor­gia was im­me­di­ately warm, wel­com­ing, and en­cour­aging, in­tro­du­cing me to oth­er people at the work­shop. Over the years, I have come to know that warmth is a de­fin­ing qual­ity in her in­ter­ac­tions with oth­ers.

The last time I saw Geor­gia was a few short weeks ago at JMM 2022. I will miss her, but I am also in­cred­ibly grate­ful to have known her.