Chelsea Walton facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Chelsea Walton
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Walton at Oberwolfach in 2014
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| Born | 1983 (age 41–42) Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
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| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Rice University |
| Thesis | On Degenerations and Deformations of Sklyanin Algebras (2011) |
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Chelsea Walton is an American mathematician. She studies advanced topics in mathematics, especially a field called algebra. This area of math looks at rules and structures. She is currently a professor at Rice University. She has also won a special award called the Sloan Research Fellowship.
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Becoming a Mathematician
Chelsea Walton grew up in Detroit, Michigan. She went to public schools there. As a child, she loved to solve puzzles. She even made a special table from her dictionary to count how often letters appeared.
When she was in high school, Chelsea knew she wanted to be a math professor. She thought it would be amazing to "do logic puzzles all day." She wanted to get paid for something she loved doing.
College and Beyond
Chelsea started her college journey at Michigan State University. She graduated from there in 2005. After that, she went to the University of Michigan. She earned her PhD, which is a very high degree, in 2011. Her PhD work was about complex math problems in algebra.
After getting her PhD, Chelsea continued her research. She worked at the University of Washington. She also spent time at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. From 2012 to 2015, she taught at the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Later, she taught at Temple University and the University of Illinois. In 2020, she joined the faculty at Rice University.
Awards and Honors
Chelsea Walton has received many important awards for her work in mathematics.
Sloan Research Fellow
In 2017, Chelsea was named a Sloan Research Fellow. This is a very important award for young scientists. It helps them continue their research. She was the fourth African-American person to win this award in mathematics.
Other Recognitions
Also in 2017, she was honored by a group called Mathematically Gifted & Black. This group celebrates the achievements of Black mathematicians.
In 2018, Chelsea won the André Lichnerowicz Prize. This is a major international award in a specific area of math called Poisson geometry. She was the first woman ever to receive this prize! The award recognized her important research on different types of algebra.
Most recently, she was chosen as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. This is a high honor given to mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions to the field.
