Celebratio Mathematica

On the oc­ca­sion of the centen­ni­al of the Amer­ic­an Math­em­at­ic­al So­ci­ety in 1988, AMS presen­ted AWM with a sil­ver bowl that has since been passed from the pres­id­ent of AWM to the pres­id­ent-elect at the Janu­ary Joint Math­em­at­ics Meet­ings (JMM). In Janu­ary 2009, then-pres­id­ent Cathy Kes­sel handed the sil­ver bowl and the pres­id­ency of AWM to me. The up­com­ing 50th an­niversary of AWM in 2021 caught me by sur­prise. Was it really that long ago that ideas for the 40th an­niversary began to emerge from our con­ver­sa­tions with Cathy, her pre­de­cessor Bar­bara Key­fitz, and former pres­id­ents Mary Gray, Rhonda Hughes, and Car­ol Wood? The 40th was a time for re­flec­tion and cel­eb­ra­tion (see Fig. 1), for hon­or­ing those who have played a sig­ni­fic­ant role in AWM, for car­ry­ing for­ward their vis­ions and cre­at­ing new ones, and for wel­com­ing those who will be its fu­ture. On this 50th an­niversary, it is my hope that the next 50 years will con­tin­ue these time-honored tra­di­tions.

Already un­der­way when I began my term in 2009 were a much-needed over­haul of the AWM web­site, pi­loted by Web Ed­it­or Holly Gaff (see Fig. 2), as­sisted by vo­lun­teers from Google, and an up­date of the on­line ap­plic­a­tion pro­cess for AWM work­shops and activ­it­ies, or­gan­ized by AWM Ex­ec­ut­ive Dir­ect­or Maeve Mc­Carthy. AWM’s 20th an­niversary had ushered in a re­design of its news­let­ter and a new block-let­ter logo. The cur­rent golden-ra­tio in­spired design de­b­uted in the May–June 2009 news­let­ter. The Decem­ber 2010 is­sue marked the first time the news­let­ter ap­peared on­line. Gen­er­ous fund­ing by Jean Taylor (AWM pres­id­ent 1999–2001) to di­git­ize all of AWM’s news­let­ters saved early is­sues from de­teri­or­a­tion and made past news­let­ters ac­cess­ible to every­one on­line via the AWM web­site. What an es­sen­tial role the news­let­ter has played in the or­gan­iz­a­tion and in keep­ing wo­men in math­em­at­ics con­nec­ted and in­formed! Anne Leg­gett be­came ed­it­or of the AWM News­let­ter in 1977 and con­tin­ues in that role to this day. Words can­not ad­equately ex­press our deep grat­it­ude for her ef­forts. Who else could suc­cess­fully ca­jole a pres­id­ent’s re­port for each is­sue with such mild re­mind­ers?

Kristin Laut­er (AWM pres­id­ent 2015–2017) and I were in­vited to speak at the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence for Wo­men in Math­em­at­ics hos­ted by the Korean Wo­men in Math­em­at­ic­al Sci­ences (KWMS) in Seoul in June 2009. The first in­ter­na­tion­al joint meet­ing of the Amer­ic­an Math­em­at­ic­al So­ci­ety and the Korean Math­em­at­ic­al So­ci­ety was to be held in Decem­ber of that year at Ewha Wo­mans Uni­versity, the world’s largest wo­men’s uni­versity. In the dual roles of AWM pres­id­ent and of AMS as­so­ci­ate sec­ret­ary for that meet­ing, I col­lab­or­ated with KWMS pres­id­ent Wansoon Kim and Kye­won Koh Park to or­gan­ize the first-ever joint AWM–KWMS event in con­junc­tion with the Decem­ber meet­ing. Activ­it­ies in­cluded a pan­el, Em­power­ing Wo­men Math­em­aticians for Ex­cel­lence, fea­tur­ing Ruth Char­ney, Jane Hawkins, Heisook Lee, and Hee Oh as pan­el­ists. They re­coun­ted their own ca­reer stor­ies with a healthy dose of ad­vice shared by each, fol­lowed by dis­cus­sion and a ban­quet.

It was not sur­pris­ing to learn that wo­men in math­em­at­ics in Korea face many of the same chal­lenges as wo­men in the US. Here, one chal­lenge we con­front is the stag­na­tion of the per­cent­age of US doc­tor­al de­grees in math­em­at­ics awar­ded to wo­men, which has hovered between 25% and 30% for the past 10 years1 Yet an­oth­er is a re­cent trend of law­suits tar­get­ing pro­grams de­signed to ad­dress the un­der­rep­res­ent­a­tion of par­tic­u­lar demo­graph­ic groups among US math­em­aticians.

In 2009, the As­so­ci­ation for Wo­men in Sci­ence (AW­IS) re­ceived a three-year grant from the Na­tion­al Sci­ence Found­a­tion for a new pro­ject, Ad­van­cing Ways of Award­ing Re­cog­ni­tion in Dis­cip­lin­ary So­ci­et­ies (or AWARDS for short). Al­most all the ma­jor US math­em­at­ics and stat­ist­ics so­ci­et­ies par­ti­cip­ated by hav­ing their award pro­cesses re­viewed and eval­u­ated with re­spect to gender bi­as. Cathy Kes­sel and Maura Mast rep­res­en­ted AWM (as an AW­IS part­ner), and Charles Ep­stein, Frank Mor­gan, and I rep­res­en­ted AMS at the AWARDS work­shop, where or­gan­iz­a­tions were asked to eval­u­ate their prize pro­ced­ures. This res­ul­ted in re­vi­sions of nom­in­at­ing pro­cesses, great­er clar­ity in prize cri­ter­ia, and more aware­ness of best prac­tices (see Betty May­field’s art­icle in this volume). Al­though there sub­sequently has been growth in the num­ber of prizes awar­ded to wo­men, the num­ber is still not rep­res­ent­at­ive of the per­cent­ages of wo­men who qual­i­fy for the prizes. However, AWM’s in­crease in the num­ber of prizes des­ig­nated for early-ca­reer math­em­aticians has helped to bring more aware­ness to their achieve­ments and boost their chances of find­ing pro­fes­sion­al op­por­tun­it­ies worthy of their tal­ents. Former stu­dents of M. Gwen­eth Humphreys at Ran­dolph-Ma­con Col­lege pro­posed and fun­ded a new AWM prize to re­cog­nize a teach­er of un­der­gradu­ate math­em­at­ics (in­de­pend­ent of gender) who has had a sig­ni­fic­ant im­pact on one or more fe­male stu­dents through ment­or­ing. The Ex­ec­ut­ive Com­mit­tee of AWM ap­proved this award in 2009, and in spring 2010 I sub­mit­ted a form­al re­quest on be­half of AWM to the com­mit­tee man­aging the Joint Math­em­at­ics Meet­ings that it be ad­ded to the oth­er AWM prizes con­ferred at the Joint Prize Ses­sion at the Janu­ary JMM. The re­sponse I re­ceived was totally un­ex­pec­ted, es­pe­cially in light of the AWARDS ef­forts. The de­cision was to re­move all AWM prizes from the ses­sion. After much back and forth, the AWM prizes were re­in­stated to the ses­sion, and the Humphreys award was to be in­cluded in fu­ture prize ses­sions. The first M. Gwen­eth Humphreys Award was presen­ted to Rhonda Hughes (EDGE Pro­gram2 co-founder and AWM pres­id­ent 1987–1989) at JMM 2011, one of the many in­spir­ing events that cel­eb­rated the 40th an­niversary of the found­ing of AWM.

The AWM Long-range Plan­ning Com­mit­tee, which had been dormant for al­most five years, was re­sur­rec­ted in 2009 and began plan­ning in earn­est for AWM’s 40th an­niversary. It was de­cided that there should be en­hanced AWM activ­it­ies at JMM 2011; that the AWM-SIAM work­shop and So­nia Ko­va­levsky lec­ture should be moved from their usu­al home at the an­nu­al SIAM sum­mer meet­ing (see Fig. 3) to ICIAM (In­ter­na­tion­al Con­gress on In­dus­tri­al and Ap­plied Math­em­at­ics), as the SIAM meet­ing was not held that year be­cause of the con­gress; and that there also should be a stand-alone meet­ing of AWM apart from JMM and ICIAM. In­creas­ing vis­ib­il­ity and build­ing a wider com­munity were at the fore­front of these ef­forts. Events at JMM 2011 in­cluded three minisym­po­sia fea­tur­ing win­ners of AWM’s Hay, Michler, and Schafer prizes as speak­ers and a ban­quet with some fine New Or­leans jazz, where Bettye Anne Case, AWM’s long­time meet­ings co­ordin­at­or, and Anne Leg­gett were honored for their ex­cep­tion­al ser­vice to AWM.

With deep sad­ness, AWM had learned that one of its founders and its second pres­id­ent, Alice Schafer, died on Septem­ber 27, 2009. AWM could not have got­ten off the ground without the fear­less de­term­in­a­tion, the un­waver­ing com­mit­ment to pro­mot­ing the equal treat­ment of all math­em­aticians, and the bound­less en­ergy of its found­ing moth­ers, es­pe­cially Mary Gray, the first pres­id­ent, and Alice Schafer, the second. Alice, who had con­trib­uted in count­less ways to the or­gan­iz­a­tion and to wo­men in math­em­at­ics, con­tin­ued to do so through an ex­traordin­ary be­quest of \$50,000 that AWM re­ceived from her es­tate. One of the en­hanced activ­it­ies at JMM 2011 was the Schafer Minisym­posi­um, where Mary Gray in­aug­ur­ated the 40th an­niversary cel­eb­ra­tion with a talk, Life in the Trenches with Alice: The Early Years, a ret­ro­spect­ive on the found­ing of AWM. Alice would have taken great pride in the Schafer Prize win­ners who spoke in the minisym­posi­um. The math­em­at­ic­al world suffered an­oth­er im­mense loss when Cora Sa­d­osky (AWM pres­id­ent 1993–1995) died on Decem­ber 3, 2010. The AWM busi­ness meet­ing at JMM 2011 was largely de­voted to a quickly ar­ranged, heart­felt re­mem­brance of Cora that her col­leagues and I or­gan­ized. Cora was both a strong ad­voc­ate for wo­men in math­em­at­ics, and, as a fac­ulty mem­ber at Howard Uni­versity, an act­ive pro­ponent of the great­er par­ti­cip­a­tion of Afric­an Amer­ic­ans in math­em­at­ics. I can only mar­vel at the tenacity and wis­dom of Mary, Alice, Cora, and all who pre­ceded and fol­lowed me in this role of pres­id­ent. The 40th an­niversary activ­it­ies at ICIAM 2011, which in­cluded an em­bed­ded AWM meet­ing, co­in­cided with the start of Bar­bara Key­fitz’s term as pres­id­ent of the In­ter­na­tion­al Coun­cil for In­dus­tri­al and Ap­plied Math­em­at­ics. Bar­bara (AWM pres­id­ent 2005–2007) be­came the first wo­man to as­sume that role. A re­cip­roc­al mem­ber­ship agree­ment between AWM and SIAM fur­ther served to strengthen AWM’s ties with the in­dus­tri­al and ap­plied math­em­at­ics com­munit­ies. In the sum­mer of 2010, SIAM pres­id­ent Douglas Arnold con­tac­ted me about the pos­sib­il­ity of such an agree­ment. At the time, only about 15% of SIAM’s mem­bers were wo­men, and AWM had few mem­bers who worked in in­dustry. The mem­ber­ship agree­ment he and I hammered out is still in force. With the re­duc­tion of aca­dem­ic job op­por­tun­it­ies, it will be­come in­creas­ingly im­port­ant for AWM to reach out to those work­ing in gov­ern­ment and in­dustry in or­der to be fully rep­res­ent­at­ive of wo­men in math­em­at­ics. A big step in this dir­ec­tion oc­curred in 2015 when Kristin Laut­er, Prin­cip­al Re­search­er and Re­search Man­ager of the Cryp­to­graphy Group at Mi­crosoft Re­search, be­came AWM’s first pres­id­ent from in­dustry since Jill Mesirov (1989–1991).

AWM’s stand-alone meet­ing was the grand fi­nale of the 40th an­niversary. By some amaz­ing align­ment of the plan­ets, the new In­sti­tute for Com­pu­ta­tion­al and Ex­per­i­ment­al Re­search in Math­em­at­ics (ICERM) at Brown Uni­versity had just re­cently re­ceived the good news that it had been chosen to be­come an NSF-fun­ded in­sti­tute. It would be open for busi­ness start­ing in 2011, and AWM pres­id­ent-elect Jill Pi­pher was to be its found­ing dir­ect­or. Jill, Kristin Laut­er, and I or­gan­ized 40 Years and Count­ing: AWM’s Cel­eb­ra­tion of Wo­men in Math­em­at­ics, which was held there in Septem­ber 2011 with enorm­ous help from the ICERM staff, fund­ing from an NSF grant, and ad­di­tion­al sup­port from AMS, Brown Uni­versity, ICERM, MAA, Mi­crosoft Re­search, Pear­son Edu­ca­tion, SIAM, and the US De­part­ment of En­ergy. Modeled on AMS sec­tion­al meet­ings, the two-day con­fer­ence had an at­tend­ance of over 300 wo­men and men and fea­tured 4 in­vited talks, 18 ses­sions on a wide range of top­ics in pure and ap­plied math­em­at­ics and math­em­at­ics edu­ca­tion, with a total of 135 speak­ers. Sub­sequent stand-alone AWM re­search sym­po­sia have been an ex­cel­lent way to per­petu­ate the spir­it of this meet­ing. A day-long re­treat at ICERM just pri­or to the 40th an­niversary meet­ing en­abled the AWM Ex­ec­ut­ive Com­mit­tee to re­flect on AWM’s ac­com­plish­ments, re­view its pro­grams, and stra­tegic­ally plan for the fu­ture. With the gray­ing of so­ci­et­ies, re­new­al of the AWM mem­ber­ship has be­come a crit­ic­al is­sue. Is AWM still rel­ev­ant? We would like to think the an­swer is an em­phat­ic “yes,” but what can be done to make AWM more at­tract­ive to early-ca­reer math­em­aticians and en­cour­age them to be­come in­volved?

Sylvia Boze­man (EDGE Pro­gram co-founder and twice an AWM Ex­ec­ut­ive Com­mit­tee mem­ber) provided an in­sight­ful an­swer that res­on­ates yet today in her AWM news­let­ter art­icle:3

It would be dif­fi­cult to meas­ure the im­pact of AWM since it was es­tab­lished in 1971 if we tried. Dur­ing that peri­od the per­cent­age of wo­men among the US cit­izens who earned doc­tor­ates in math­em­at­ics has doubled; there is great­er vis­ib­il­ity of wo­men on na­tion­al pro­grams and in pro­fes­sion­al lead­er­ship po­s­i­tions; and more vis­ible at­tempts have been made to in­terest young wo­men in math­em­at­ics. AWM has ad­dressed each of these areas through its pro­grams. But as long as wo­men are un­der­rep­res­en­ted in any as­pect of the math­em­at­ics com­munity, and as long as the reas­ons for that un­der­rep­res­ent­a­tion are not ad­equately ad­dressed by the lar­ger math­em­at­ics com­munity, we will con­tin­ue to need AWM. As a young and de­vel­op­ing or­gan­iz­a­tion, it has an op­por­tun­ity to es­tab­lish a pat­tern of in­volving wo­men from all groups in ar­tic­u­lat­ing and ad­dress­ing is­sues of com­mon con­cern. If AWM does not, who will?

Draw­ing on the en­thu­si­ast­ic re­sponse to 40 Years and Count­ing, AWM de­veloped a series of bi­en­ni­al re­search sym­po­sia. I co-or­gan­ized the first in the series with Hélène Bar­celo, Es­telle Bas­or, Ruth Char­ney, Frank Far­ris, and Jill Pi­pher at Santa Clara Uni­versity in 2013. The sym­posi­um fea­tured plen­ary talks by three dis­tin­guished math­em­aticians: In­ez Fung, Pro­fess­or of At­mo­spher­ic Sci­ences at UC Berke­ley and an ex­pert on the math­em­at­ics of cli­mate; the late Maryam Mirza­kh­ani, 2014 Fields Medal­ist; and Lauren Wil­li­ams, the Dwight Park­er Robin­son Pro­fess­or of Math­em­at­ics at Har­vard Uni­versity and the Sally Starling Seaver Pro­fess­or at the Rad­cliffe In­sti­tute (as of 2020). There were also in­vited and con­trib­uted ses­sions on a wide range of sub­jects in pure and ap­plied math­em­at­ics, a poster ses­sion for gradu­ate stu­dents, and a dis­cus­sion of the im­poster syn­drome mod­er­ated by Hélène Bar­celo with pan­el­ists Ruth Char­ney, Bri­an Con­rey, Jill Pi­pher, and Car­ol Wood. A per­sist­ent prob­lem that dis­cour­ages wo­men from pur­su­ing ca­reers in math­em­at­ics, lack of con­fid­ence is com­mon for both men and wo­men dur­ing the de­vel­op­ment of their ca­reers. Yet wo­men are more likely to feel their self-doubts are unique and to give up as a res­ult. The pan­el con­sequently was de­signed to show young­er wo­men that even some of the most suc­cess­ful, well-es­tab­lished wo­men and men in the field have had, and may of­ten still have, sim­il­ar feel­ings of be­ing “an im­poster” and not de­serving of the status they have at­tained.

One at­tendee wrote, “This event was a mag­ni­fi­cent ex­per­i­ence for me. I am so glad that AWM is do­ing this, and I’ll make sure to tell the oth­er wo­men in my de­part­ment about what a fant­ast­ic op­por­tun­ity these are.” AWM was grate­ful for the fin­an­cial sup­port from Santa Clara Uni­versity, NSF, NSA, and the in­sti­tutes AIM, ICERM, and MSRI that en­abled this meet­ing to launch the highly suc­cess­ful series of AWM re­search sym­po­sia.

Dur­ing my term, AWM made a con­cer­ted ef­fort to widen its out­reach with such activ­it­ies as par­ti­cip­a­tion in the in­aug­ur­al USA Sci­ence and En­gin­eer­ing Fest­iv­al in Oc­to­ber 2010. This was spear­headed by Ex­ec­ut­ive Com­mit­tee mem­ber Ir­ina Mitrea, co-or­gan­izers Tai Melch­er and Kath­ar­ine Ott, and a phe­nom­en­al group of un­der­gradu­ate stu­dent vo­lun­teers from uni­versit­ies in the Wash­ing­ton, DC, area. With few re­sources, the group cre­ated activ­it­ies in­volving cryp­to­graphy and ciphers, such as Thomas Jef­fer­son’s wheel cipher used dur­ing his pres­id­ency for en­cod­ing dip­lo­mat­ic secrets, to test the skills of par­ti­cipants young and old and to in­spire girls to get ex­cited about math­em­at­ics. Par­ti­cip­a­tion in this fest­iv­al event in even-numbered years and in the Na­tion­al Math­em­at­ics Fest­iv­al in odd-numbered ones has since be­come an im­port­ant AWM pro­act­ive tra­di­tion. In 1993, AWM pres­id­ent Cora Sa­d­osky noted the many gains already achieved by the as­so­ci­ation as it was about halfway to the mile­stone we now cel­eb­rate. But then she ad­ded:

Still, wo­men con­tin­ue to face for­mid­able prob­lems in their de­vel­op­ment as math­em­aticians — from ele­ment­ary school to gradu­ate school to the Na­tion­al Academy and bey­ond. To suc­cess­fully con­front these prob­lems, we need the ideas and the work, the en­thu­si­asm and the com­mit­ment of all — stu­dents and teach­ers and re­search­ers and in­dus­tri­al math­em­aticians — of every wo­man and every man who stands for wo­men’s right to math­em­at­ics.4

Over the years, men such as Chand­ler Dav­is and Lee Lorch have been ded­ic­ated and loy­al al­lies who have giv­en mor­al and fin­an­cial sup­port to AWM. In­deed, a non­trivi­al per­cent­age of AWM’s mem­bers are men. At his re­tire­ment con­fer­ence in 1992, Chand­ler was presen­ted an AWM mug, and Cora Sa­d­osky, pres­id­ent-elect of AWM, sent a mes­sage from Bar­celona:

While our found­ing moth­ers were cre­at­ing AWM, 21 years ago, Chand­ler was at their side. […] It has giv­en all of us who have the joy­ous priv­ilege of his coun­sel and cri­ti­cism, the op­por­tun­ity to learn how one can be at the same time level-headed and un­com­prom­ising, pa­tient and ar­dent, tol­er­ant and un­yield­ing.5

At the JMM in 1992, AWM made a sur­prise present­a­tion of a cita­tion to Lee for his ef­forts as a cham­pi­on of hu­man rights (see Fig. 4):

To Lee Lorch, a found­ing mem­ber of AWM, with thanks for his act­iv­ism on be­half of wo­men and minor­ity math­em­aticians. Lee has of­ten been a thorn in the side of the math­em­at­ics es­tab­lish­ment. But then, to its cred­it, so has AWM…When AWM helped to open up the AMS Coun­cil to pe­ti­tion can­did­ates, Lee was elec­ted and pushed tire­lessly on is­sues of spe­cial con­cern to wo­men and minor­ity math­em­aticians.6

It was won­der­ful to re­cog­nize Lee Lorch again in 2010, on the oc­ca­sion of his 95th birth­day, with a spe­cial news­let­ter re­mem­brance.7 Throughout his ca­reer, he was an un­flag­ging ad­voc­ate for edu­ca­tion­al op­por­tun­it­ies for wo­men and un­der­rep­res­en­ted minor­it­ies. Vivi­enne Malone Mayes, an un­der­gradu­ate stu­dent of Lorch at Fisk Uni­versity whom he en­cour­aged to pur­sue doc­tor­al stud­ies in math­em­at­ics, was the first Black per­son elec­ted to AWM’s Ex­ec­ut­ive Com­mit­tee.

AWM has been a force for pos­it­ive change and an ef­fect­ive voice on be­half of the ad­vance­ment of wo­men in the math­em­at­ic­al pro­fes­sions. With only a few paid staff mem­bers, AWM ex­ists and thrives be­cause of the ex­traordin­ary ded­ic­a­tion of its thou­sands of vo­lun­teers who have com­mit­ted time and en­ergy to AWM over its 50 years of ex­ist­ence. I am honored to be coun­ted as one of those thou­sands.