Iris Mack facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Iris Mack
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| Born | May 17, 1956 |
| Died | September 27, 2022 |
| Alma mater | Vassar College UCLA London Business School Harvard University |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | AT&T Bell Labs MIT University of San Francisco Clark Atlanta University Investment Banque BNP Paribas Enron Harvard Management Company |
| Thesis | Block implicit one-step methods for solving smooth and discontinuous systems of differential/algebraic equations (1986) |
Iris Marie Mack (1956–2022) was an amazing American writer, speaker, and mathematician. She achieved many great things in her life, especially in the world of math and finance.
Contents
Biography
Iris Mack grew up in New Orleans in a big family. As a teenager, she became very interested in space and how the universe works. She even got to work as a summer intern at a NASA facility.
Education and Early Career
Iris went to Vassar College. She graduated in 1978 with two main subjects: mathematics and mathematical physics. While she was in college, she worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. There, she helped with the Viking program, which sent probes to Mars.
She then went to UCLA to earn her master's degree in mathematics. After that, she worked at AT&T Bell Labs. She even received a patent for her work on fiber optics, which is about sending information using light through thin glass fibers.
Iris also attended the London Business School as a Sloan Fellow. There, she earned an executive MBA, which is a special business degree.
In 1986, she made history. She became the second Black woman to earn a doctorate degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University. Applied mathematics uses math to solve real-world problems.
Teaching at MIT
Later in 1986, Iris Mack became the first Black woman to teach applied mathematics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. This is a very famous school! She taught there until 1991. Her courses included financial engineering, statistics, and operations research. These subjects use math to understand money, data, and how businesses work.
In 1989, she was even a semifinalist for the NASA Astronaut Program. This means she was considered to become an astronaut!
Career Highlights
Iris Mack was a very busy person. She gave talks and advised companies on many financial topics. These included energy derivatives (which are about the future price of energy), quantitative finance (using math in finance), and high-frequency trading (very fast computer trading). She shared her knowledge in places like New York City, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and London.
She also wrote articles for the Huffington Post. In some of these articles, she shared her experiences during the 2008 financial crisis.
Board Memberships
Iris also served on the boards of several important groups. These included the United States National Research Council's Transportation Research Board. She also helped organizations like the Women Mentor Women Foundation.
Phat Math Inc.
In 2003, Iris Mack started her own company called Phat Math Inc. in Miami, Florida. A few years later, in 2007, her team launched PhatMath.com. This website was a fun way for students to learn math. It offered free online math homework help 24/7 for students from kindergarten to college. PhatMath.com was even named one of the Top 50 Social Sites for Educators.
Iris Mack had a truly amazing career. She was an astronaut semifinalist and was recognized by Glamour Magazine as one of the "Top 10" college students and "Top 10" working women. She worked as an investment banker and even an energy trader at Enron. She was also a professor at MIT. Her journey shows how much you can achieve with hard work and a love for learning.
Selected Works
Iris Mack wrote several books, sharing her knowledge with others:
- Energy Trading and Risk Management: A Practical Approach to Hedging, Trading and Portfolio Diversification, ISBN: 978-1118339336
- Mama says, "Money Doesn't Grow on Trees!", ISBN: 978-1413408911
- Mama says, "Money Doesn't Grow on Trees!": World of Dr. Mackamatix Mathematics Edutainment Book, ISBN: 978-1456502904
- Convergence analysis of block implicit one-step methods for solving differential/algebraic equations, ISBN: 978-1175753960
- Generalized Picard-Lindelf theory, ISBN: 978-1178750638
