Cathleen Synge Morawetz

Cathleen Synge Morawetz in 2009

Cathleen Synge Morawetz (May 5, 1923 – August 8, 2017) was a Canadian mathematician who spent her career working as an applied mathematician in the United States. She was the president of the American Mathematical Society for a two-year term from 1995 to 1996. In 1998 she was awarded the USA's National Medal of Science.

Quotes

• For my topic today I have chosen a subject connecting mathematics and aeronautical engineering. The histories of these two subjects are close. It might appear however to the layman that, back in the time of the first powered flight in 1903, aeronautical engineering had little to do with mathematics. The Wright brothers, despite the fact that they had no university education, were well read and learned their art using wind tunnels but it is unlikely that they knew that airfoil theory was connected to the Riemann conformal mapping theorem. But it was also the time of Joukowski and later Prandtl who developed and understood that connection and put mathematics solidly behind the new engineering. Since that time each new geernation has discovered new problems that are at the forefront of both fields. One such problem is flight near the speed of sound. This one in fact has puzzled more than one generation.
  • "The mathematical approach to the sonic barrier." Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 6, no. 2 (1982): 127-145. (Josiah Willard Gibbs lecture, January 7, 1981)

Quotes about Cathleen Morawetz

• The women who earned their Ph.D.'s in mathematics during the forties and fifties include some of the most distinguished mathematicians and mathematics educators of this century. Julia Robinson, Cathleen Morawetz, and Mary Ellen Rudin are probably the best-known women mathematicians of this generation.
  • Margaret "Marge" Anne Marie Murray, Women Becoming Mathematicians: Creating a Professional Identity in Post-World War II America. MIT Press. 2001. p. 23. ISBN 978-0-262-63246-1. 

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Cathleen Synge Morawetz on Wikipedia
• "Cathleen Morawetz", Biographies of Women Mathematicians, Agnes Scott College