Dusa McDuff facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Dusa McDuff
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Dusa McDuff, Edinburgh 2009 (80th Birthday of Michael Atiyah)
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Margaret Dusa Waddington
18 October 1945 London, England
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| Alma mater | University of Edinburgh Girton College, Cambridge |
| Spouse(s) | |
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| Awards | BMS Morning Speaker Satter Prize (1991) Fellow of the Royal Society Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2008) Speaker at International Congress of Mathematicians BMC Plenary Speaker Sylvester Medal (2018) |
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| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Cambridge University of York University of Warwick Massachusetts Institute of Technology Institute for Advanced Study Stony Brook University Barnard College |
| Doctoral advisor | George A. Reid |
| Doctoral students | Katrin Wehrheim |
Dusa McDuff is a famous English mathematician. She was born on October 18, 1945. She studies a special area of math called symplectic geometry. She was the first person to win the Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics, and she is a member of the Royal Society. Today, she is a math professor at Barnard College.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Dusa McDuff was born Margaret Dusa Waddington in London, England. Her father, Conrad Hal Waddington, was a biologist. Her mother, Margaret Justin Blanco White, was an architect. Dusa grew up in Scotland, where her father was a professor at the University of Edinburgh.
School Days
Dusa went to St George's School for Girls in Edinburgh. Even though the school's math level was not as high as the boys' school, she had a really good math teacher. She always wanted to be a mathematician. She knew she wanted a career, but she was not sure how to achieve it. She later realized that balancing a career with life as a woman could be challenging.
University Studies
Dusa turned down a scholarship to the University of Cambridge. Instead, she chose to study at the University of Edinburgh to stay in Scotland. She earned her first degree in 1967. Then, she went to Girton College, Cambridge for her advanced studies.
At Cambridge, Dusa worked with mathematician George A. Reid. She focused on problems in a field called functional analysis. She solved a difficult math problem about Von Neumann algebras. Her important work was published in a top math journal called Annals of Mathematics.
Career and Discoveries
After finishing her doctorate in 1971, Dusa received a special fellowship at Cambridge. She then visited Moscow for six months with her husband, David McDuff. This trip turned out to be very important for her math career.
Meeting Israel Gelfand
In Moscow, Dusa met a famous mathematician named Israel Gelfand. He helped her see mathematics in a new way. She said that Gelfand talked about math as if it were poetry. He showed her that math could be creative and full of hidden ideas. This experience greatly changed her view of mathematics.
Returning to England
When Dusa returned to Cambridge, she started attending topology lectures. Soon after, she was invited to teach at the University of York. She continued her math research there.
Later, she got a position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her career grew even more at MIT. She then joined the Institute for Advanced Study, where she worked on important math theorems. After that, she returned to England to teach at the University of Warwick.
Moving to the United States
Around this time, Dusa met mathematician John Milnor. To be closer to him, she took a teaching job at Stony Brook University. She became an independent mathematician, focusing on how different shapes and spaces relate to each other.
Since then, she has worked on symplectic topology. This is a field that studies shapes and spaces using special mathematical rules. In 1985, she studied the work of Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov in Paris. Since 2007, she has been a professor at Barnard College. In 1984, Dusa McDuff married John Milnor, who is also a very famous mathematician.
Contributions to Mathematics
For over 30 years, Dusa McDuff has been a key person in developing symplectic geometry and topology. She has made many important discoveries in this field.
Key Research Areas
- She showed the first examples of special mathematical forms that are similar but not exactly the same.
- She helped classify certain types of four-dimensional shapes.
- She has studied how methods from symplectic topology can be used in other areas of math.
- She has also worked on how different shapes can fit inside other shapes, which led to interesting questions in number theory.
- With Katrin Wehrheim, she has carefully checked the foundations of a classic proof in symplectic geometry.
Published Works
Dusa McDuff has also co-written two important textbooks with Dietmar Salamon. These books are called Introduction to Symplectic Topology and J-Holomorphic Curves and Symplectic Topology. They are used by students and researchers to learn about these complex topics.
Awards and Recognition
Dusa McDuff has received many honors for her amazing work in mathematics.
- In 1991, she was the first person to receive the Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics. This award recognized her work in symplectic geometry.
- She became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1994.
- In 1998, she was a Noether Lecturer, a special honor for women in mathematics.
- She is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences (1999) and the American Philosophical Society (2013).
- In 2008, she was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
- She has given important talks at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1990 and 1998.
- In 2012, she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
- She was the first woman to give the Hardy Lecture for the London Mathematical Society in 1999.
- She is also a member of the Academia Europaea.
- In 2019, she became a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics.
- In 2010, she won the Senior Berwick Prize from the London Mathematical Society.
- In 2017, she and Dietmar Salamon received the AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition.
- In 2018, she was awarded the Sylvester Medal by the Royal Society.
- In 2025, Dusa McDuff received the AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement.
See also
In Spanish: Dusa McDuff para niños
