Celebratio Mathematica

Geor­gia was an in­spir­a­tion, a role mod­el, and a friend to me. She was a stel­lar math­em­atician and lead­er, as well as a gentle soul with a heart of gold. She took a thought­ful, care­ful, and in­clus­ive ap­proach to any im­port­ant is­sue she con­fron­ted. Many of the trib­utes to her life noted Geor­gia’s geni­us in sci­entif­ic col­lab­or­a­tion; I ex­per­i­enced her geni­us in bring­ing people to­geth­er to im­prove the pro­fes­sion­al lives of wo­men math­em­aticians.

I first met Geor­gia in Seoul, Korea, in June 2009, when she was Pres­id­ent of the As­so­ci­ation for Wo­men in Math­em­at­ics (AWM). We were both In­vited Speak­ers at the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence for Wo­men in Math­em­at­ics hos­ted by the Korean Wo­men in Math­em­at­ic­al Sci­ences (KWMS). This semi-an­nu­al con­fer­ence brings to­geth­er in­ter­na­tion­al and Korean wo­men math­em­aticians to speak on their re­search in spe­cial ses­sions and plen­ary talks. Geor­gia and I were housed to­geth­er at the Korean In­sti­tute for Ad­vanced Study (KI­AS). We were both in­fec­ted with en­thu­si­asm from the con­fer­ence, and with the idea that the AWM could and should run such con­fer­ences to sup­port and help ad­vance pro­fes­sion­al wo­men math­em­aticians at later stages in their re­search ca­reers, bey­ond the postdoc­tor­al stage. Sev­er­al months later, Geor­gia asked me to join her and the next AWM Pres­id­ent, Jill Pi­pher, to co-or­gan­ize the first AWM Re­search Sym­posi­um to cel­eb­rate the 40th An­niversary of AWM. The 40th An­niversary Sym­posi­um con­sisted of eight­een spe­cial ses­sions and four plen­ary talks with more than 135 wo­men speak­ers. Geor­gia worked to ob­tain grants to sup­port par­ti­cipant travel. That meet­ing launched a new tra­di­tion of bi­an­nu­al AWM Re­search Sym­po­sia which has grown over time and con­tin­ues today. Geor­gia and I were both truly thrilled!

This was also the be­gin­ning of a beau­ti­ful friend­ship with Geor­gia. I still re­mem­ber walk­ing and talk­ing with Geor­gia in Seoul, brain­storm­ing ideas for AWM while she helped me pick out two beau­ti­ful red sun um­brel­las dec­or­ated with rows of tiny cats for my twin daugh­ters at home. I have the feel­ing from read­ing the trib­utes of oth­ers that she made every­one feel as spe­cial as she made me feel when we were to­geth­er. We saw each oth­er at least sev­er­al times per year at AWM meet­ings and events, but also in the con­text of mu­tu­al ser­vice to MSRI and the AMS. Geor­gia was the Chair of the AWM Nom­in­at­ing Com­mit­tee that in­vited me to serve as AWM Pres­id­ent from 2015–2017. Later she helped me by serving on the Nom­in­at­ing Com­mit­tee when I was Chair, and Kath­ryn Le­onard ac­cep­ted our in­vit­a­tion to serve as AWM Pres­id­ent from 2021–2023. We served to­geth­er on the Board of Trust­ees for MSRI, and on the Com­mit­tee on Wo­men for MSRI. We of­ten had din­ner to­geth­er dur­ing semi-an­nu­al MSRI Board meet­ings and used the time to plan and dis­cuss ideas for sup­port­ing wo­men in math. The last time I saw Geor­gia was just be­fore the pan­dem­ic lock­down star­ted, at the MSRI Board of Trust­ees meet­ing and din­ner in March 2020.

We es­pe­cially en­joyed our time to­geth­er at the 2014 In­ter­na­tion­al Con­gress of Math­em­at­ics (ICM), again in Seoul, Korea, run by the In­ter­na­tion­al Math­em­at­ic­al Uni­on (IMU). Geor­gia was the ICM Emmy No­eth­er Lec­turer at ICM 2014, and she de­livered a beau­ti­ful lec­ture to a packed audi­ence titled “Con­nect­ing the McKay cor­res­pond­ence and Schur–Weyl du­al­ity”. ICM 2014 was the first time that the ICM Emmy No­eth­er Lec­ture was de­livered as a per­man­ent fix­ture of the ICM, and IMU Pres­id­ent In­grid Daubech­ies presen­ted Geor­gia with a bronze plaquette of Emmy No­eth­er. In­grid was in the pro­cess of launch­ing the IMU Com­mit­tee on Wo­men in Math­em­at­ics (CWM), and ICM 2014 was also the first time that a Fields medal was awar­ded to a wo­man, so we had much to cel­eb­rate! Geor­gia gen­er­ously sug­ges­ted me as a mem­ber of the first CWM of the IMU, to rep­res­ent the AWM and our ini­ti­at­ives.

Geor­gia had also worked with Korean wo­men lead­ers from KWMS to or­gan­ize the first In­ter­na­tion­al Con­gress of Wo­men Math­em­aticians (ICWM) at Ewha Wo­mans Uni­versity in Seoul the day be­fore the ICM star­ted. Over time, she de­veloped and nur­tured strong ties with the Korean math­em­at­ic­al com­munity. As AMS Sec­tion­al Sec­ret­ary, she or­gan­ized a joint meet­ing of the AMS and KMS. She also es­tab­lished a joint mem­ber­ship agree­ment between the AWM and KWMS.

Geor­gia chaired the Pro­gram Com­mit­tee for the fol­low-up to ICWM 2014, the World Meet­ing for Wo­men in Math­em­at­ics — (WM)², a satel­lite event of the ICM 2018 in Brazil. The (WM)² brought to­geth­er math­em­aticians from all over the world, with a fo­cus on Lat­in Amer­ica. I en­cour­aged Geor­gia to con­sider pub­lish­ing a pro­ceed­ings volume for (WM)² 2018 in the AWM Spring­er Series, to high­light the event and con­tri­bu­tions to math­em­at­ics of wo­men in Lat­in Amer­ica. Geor­gia co-ed­ited the pro­ceed­ings volume, World Wo­men in Math­em­at­ics 2018: Pro­ceed­ings of the First World Meet­ing for Wo­men in Math­em­at­ics (WM)², which ap­peared in 2019.1

Geor­gia and I had a nat­ur­al con­nec­tion be­cause I was born and raised in Wis­con­sin, and she was a Pro­fess­or of Math­em­at­ics at the Uni­versity of Wis­con­sin–Madis­on. She was end­lessly show­ing her ap­pre­ci­ation for oth­ers, in par­tic­u­lar for AWM vo­lun­teers’ hard work on be­half of wo­men in math­em­at­ics and the mis­sion of AWM. She was care­ful to al­ways thank vo­lun­teers by name in her Pres­id­ent’s re­ports to re­cog­nize their con­tri­bu­tions. For ex­ample, she in­cluded an en­tire “Thank You” page in her last Pres­id­ent’s re­port in the AWM News­let­ter, ac­know­ledging all the vo­lun­teers who had served dur­ing her term! This grat­it­ude res­on­ated with me from my up­bring­ing, and I fol­lowed her lead when I was Pres­id­ent.

Geor­gia made so many ex­tremely im­port­ant con­tri­bu­tions to ad­van­cing ca­reers for wo­men math­em­aticians, too nu­mer­ous to list here. So, I will fo­cus on two: the AWM Re­search Sym­po­sia and Re­search Net­works for Wo­men. The AWM Re­search Sym­po­sia bring wo­men math­em­aticians to­geth­er to re­cog­nize their re­search achieve­ments, build com­munity and strengthen net­works, all of which help to ad­vance ca­reers and im­prove work­ing con­di­tions. Geor­gia co-or­gan­ized the second one at Santa Clara Uni­versity in 2013, with Hélène Bar­celo, Es­telle Bas­or, Ruth Char­ney, Frank Far­ris, and Jill Pi­pher.

The Re­search Net­works for Wo­men were modeled on WIN, the series of Re­search Col­lab­or­a­tion Con­fer­ences and the Re­search Net­work for Wo­men in num­ber the­ory, which I star­ted in 2008 with Rachel Pries and Ren­ate Scheidler. Sep­ar­ately, Geor­gia or­gan­ized the first con­fer­ence for Wo­men in Al­geb­ra­ic Com­bin­at­or­ics (ACxx) with Stephanie van Wil­li­gen­burg and Mon­ica Vazir­ani at BIRS in 2011 on a slightly dif­fer­ent col­lab­or­at­ive mod­el. Geor­gia later launched an­oth­er Re­search Net­work, Wo­men in Non­com­mut­at­ive Al­gebra and Rep­res­ent­a­tion The­ory (WIN­ART), with El­len Kirk­man, Susan Mont­gomery, and Chelsea Walton.

Ini­ti­at­ives to sup­port wo­men in math­em­at­ics re­quire fund­ing. In 2012, co-PIs Geor­gia Ben­k­art, Ruth Char­ney, AWM Ex­ec­ut­ive Dir­ect­or Mag­nhild Li­en, and Jill Pi­pher wrote an NSF AD­VANCE grant pro­pos­al to sup­port and launch new Re­search Net­works for Wo­men. Geor­gia and Jill had re­worked the AWM work­shop format at the an­nu­al Joint Math Meet­ings (JMM) to fo­cus on sup­port­ing Re­search Net­works for Wo­men. In Janu­ary 2013, the AWM Work­shop at the Joint Math Meet­ings was run on the new mod­el for the first time, fea­tur­ing talks by seni­or and ju­ni­or wo­men in num­ber the­ory as a fol­low-up to the WIN2 con­fer­ence. The JMM 2016 work­shop fea­tured talks by wo­men in Al­geb­ra­ic Com­bin­at­or­ics, in­clud­ing Geor­gia and Hélène Bar­celo, as a fol­low-up to ACxx 2011.

Geor­gia de­voted her­self to plan­ning the AWM 40th an­niversary cel­eb­ra­tions, as she de­scribed in her “Re­flec­tions of AWM’s 19th Pres­id­ent” art­icle.2 For the AWM 50th an­niversary cel­eb­ra­tion and in an­ti­cip­a­tion of Wo­men’s His­tory Month, Geor­gia, Sylvia Wie­gand and I wrote the art­icle “AWM at 50 and Bey­ond”3 de­scrib­ing a dec­ade of work on es­tab­lish­ing the AWM Re­search Sym­po­sia, re­vamp­ing the AWM Work­shops, and launch­ing the Re­search Net­works for Wo­men pro­gram.

Al­though the 2012 AD­VANCE grant was not awar­ded, it laid the ground­work for our suc­cess­ful 2014 AWM AD­VANCE pro­pos­al to sup­port Re­search Net­works for Wo­men, “Ca­reer ment­or­ing for wo­men math­em­aticians through re­search-fo­cused net­works”. This five-year \$750,000 NSF grant was the largest grant AWM had ever re­ceived and the first to provide money for AWM’s in­dir­ect costs in ad­di­tion to fund­ing par­ti­cipant sup­port. This was a wa­ter­shed mo­ment for AWM, the suc­cess­ful cul­min­a­tion of an in­spir­ing ef­fort in­volving sev­en AWM Pres­id­ents, in­clud­ing Geor­gia.

Geor­gia ended her last AWM Pres­id­ent’s Re­port in the Janu­ary–Feb­ru­ary 2011 is­sue of the AWM News­let­ter with a quote from one of my fa­vor­ite au­thors, Ur­sula Le Guin:

It is good to have an end to jour­ney to­ward; but it is the jour­ney that mat­ters, in the end.

It is an hon­or to cel­eb­rate the great jour­ney that was Geor­gia’s life, and the many ways her jour­ney pro­pelled and was in­ter­twined with mine and so many oth­er gen­er­a­tions of wo­men math­em­aticians.

Kristin Laut­er is the Dir­ect­or of FAIR Labs North Amer­ica, lead­ing AI Re­search at Meta. She is an Af­fil­i­ate Pro­fess­or of Math­em­at­ics at the Uni­versity of Wash­ing­ton. Her re­search areas are num­ber the­ory, cryp­to­graphy, pri­vacy, and AI. She was Pres­id­ent of the As­so­ci­ation for Wo­men in Math­em­at­ics (AWM) from 2015–2017. She is a Fel­low of the Amer­ic­an As­so­ci­ation for the Ad­vance­ment of Sci­ence (AAAS), AMS, AWM, and SIAM, and an Hon­or­ary Mem­ber of the Roy­al Math­em­at­ic­al So­ci­ety of Spain. She was the Polya Lec­turer for Math­em­at­ic­al As­so­ci­ation of Amer­ica (2018–2020) and the SIAM Block Com­munity Prize Lec­turer (2022).