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| Photo: Jennifer Ruef |
The contributions of women in mathematics have historically been pushed to the side, but more and more stories are surfacing. The 2016 movie “Hidden Figures,” for one, told the tale of the African-American women whose calculations helped launch the astronaut John Glenn into orbit.
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| Thoughtful woman who tries to solve math problems. Photo: Shutterstock |
“But we still need more stories about women in mathematics,” Jennifer Ruef, a UO assistant professor of education studies, writes in a recent article for The Conversation. “While many mathematicians know of my colleague Marion Walter, she isn’t known well outside her field. And she should be, for her own story and the lessons she brings to our understanding of mathematics.”
UO Professor Emerita Marion Walter is one of the few mathematicians to have a theorem named after her: Marion Walter’s theorem, which determines the area of the hexagon created by trisecting the sides of a triangle. She also founded the Boston Area Mathematics Specialists, an organization focused on improving the quality of math education for elementary and middle school children, and authored several books and articles.
Walter was born in 1928 to a Jewish family in Berlin. Just before the outbreak of World War II in 1939, she and her sister were evacuated to England...
“The next time you have a reason to think about mathematicians, I hope you will remember Marion Walter,” Ruef writes. “Women and girls have been told, in many ways, that there is no room in math and science for them. Representations matter. The more powerful women we see in mathematics, the more evidence we have that mathematics is for all people.”
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Source: AroundtheO
