Catherine Cavagnaro facts for kids

Catherine Elizabeth Cavagnaro, born in 1965, is an amazing American mathematician and pilot. She teaches math at Sewanee: The University of the South. She is also known for her incredible flying skills, including setting a record for airplane spins! She has won many awards for helping make flying safer and teaching others to fly. She is even in the Tennessee Aviation Hall of Fame.

Early Life and Family

Catherine Cavagnaro grew up with two sisters. Her father, Louis Cavagnaro, came from Italian immigrant parents. He grew up in the beautiful Yosemite Valley. He became a builder of large dish antennas, like the famous Stanford Dish. Catherine's mother, Catherine Mary Kickham, was from Kilkenny, Ireland. Her parents moved to California and later opened a store selling Irish goods.

Education and Math Career

Catherine Cavagnaro went to Santa Clara University and graduated in 1987. She then earned her PhD in math from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1995. Her advanced studies focused on a type of math called low-dimensional topology.

In 1993, she started teaching math at Sewanee: The University of the South. She has been the head of the math department there. She also created math classes that combine her love for flying. These classes teach about how planes fly (called aerodynamics) and how to use math to understand physical things.

In 2001, Catherine Cavagnaro helped create a book called Dictionary of Classical and Theoretical Mathematics. This book is part of a big series of math dictionaries.

Aviation Adventures

Learning to Fly

When Catherine was a math student, she loved watching airplanes. She dreamed of flying but could not afford lessons. She finally started flying in 1999. This was after she had been teaching at Sewanee for a while and had her first child. Her husband gave her flying lessons as a gift.

She became a certified flight instructor in 2001. This means she can teach others how to fly. She became very good at aerobatics, which is flying stunts. She trained with a famous pilot known as a "spin doctor." Catherine has flown different types of planes, including a Cessna 152 Aerobat and a Beechcraft Bonanza.

Record-Breaking Spins

The "spin doctor" pilot she trained with held a record for doing 25 consecutive turns in a flat spin. A flat spin is when an airplane spins flat like a frisbee while falling. Catherine Cavagnaro broke his record! She performed 60 consecutive turns in her Cessna plane. She even filmed it to show that pilots can still recover from a spin even after many turns. Later, another pilot, Spencer Suderman, broke her record with even more turns.

Teaching and Safety

From 2004 to 2008, Catherine was a visiting professor at the University of Tennessee Space Institute. She worked as a test pilot for NASA. She helped study how a plane flew when ice formed on it.

Today, she runs the Ace Aerobatic School in Sewanee, Tennessee. She also writes articles for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. She is an examiner for the Federal Aviation Administration, which means she helps test new pilots.

Awards and Recognition

Catherine Cavagnaro has received many awards for her work in aviation.

• In 2005, she won an Amelia Earhart Memorial Scholarship Award.
• In 2018, she was named the National FAA Safety Team Representative of the Year.
• In 2020, she was named the National Certificated Flight Instructor of the Year.
• She was also added to the Tennessee Aviation Hall of Fame in 2018.

Her story was included in a 2008 book called A Hunger for the Sky. This book shared the stories of nine amazing women aviators.