Lenore Blum facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Lenore Blum
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Lenore Blum, Berkeley, California, 1998
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| Born | December 18, 1942 New York City, U.S.
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| Nationality | American |
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| Spouse(s) | Manuel Blum |
| Children | Avrim Blum |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science |
| Thesis | Generalized Algebraic Theories: A Model Theoretic Approach (1968) |
| Doctoral advisor | Gerald Sacks |
| Doctoral students | Carol Frieze |
Lenore Carol Blum, born on December 18, 1942, is an American computer scientist and mathematician. She has made important discoveries in how computers work with numbers. She also helped create ways to make secret codes and random numbers.
Lenore Blum was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University until 2019. Now, she is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also famous for her efforts to help more girls and women get involved in math and computer science.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Lenore Blum was born in New York City. Her mother was a science teacher. When Lenore was nine, her family moved to Venezuela.
After finishing high school in Venezuela at age 16, she started studying architecture. This was in 1959, at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. In 1960, she changed her focus to mathematics.
In 1961, she moved to Simmons College in Boston. She married Manuel Blum, who was studying at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Simmons College was a women's college. She was able to take math classes at MIT. In 1963, she earned her bachelor's degree in mathematics from Simmons.
In 1968, she earned her Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT. Her research looked at deep connections between different areas of math. Her advisor was Gerald Sacks.
Career Highlights
After getting her Ph.D., Blum went to the University of California at Berkeley. She worked there as a researcher and lecturer. At that time, the math department did not offer permanent jobs to women. So, after two years, her position was not renewed.
In 1971, she helped start the Association for Women in Mathematics. This group supports women in math.
Building a Computer Science Program
In 1973, she joined Mills College, another women's college. In 1974, she started the mathematics and computer science department there. This was the only computer science program at a women's college at the time. She led this department for 13 years.
From 1975 to 1978, she was the third president of the Association for Women in Mathematics. She also served on the council of the American Mathematical Society. In 1979, she received a special teaching award at Mills College.
Research and Mentoring
In the 1980s, Blum worked with Michael Shub at the CUNY Graduate Center. She also spent a year working at IBM.
In 1992, Blum became the deputy director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. She worked there with its director, William Thurston.
From 1996 to 1998, she visited the City University of Hong Kong. She worked on her book, Complexity and Real Computation, there. In 1999, she became a distinguished professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).
Helping Women in Computer Science
At CMU, Lenore Blum noticed that not many women were studying computer science. She believed this was because there were not enough support networks for them. She wanted to make the computer science program more welcoming.
She started the Women@SCS program at CMU. This program offered mentoring and outreach for women in computer science. Thanks to this program, the number of women in CMU's undergraduate computer science program grew. It reached almost 50%.
Blum also helped create Project Olympus at CMU. This program helps new businesses start up in Pittsburgh.
Key Research Areas
Lenore Blum has done important research in computer science and mathematics.
Random Number Generation
One of her well-known inventions is the Blum Blum Shub pseudorandom number generator. She created this with Manuel Blum and Michael Shub. It's a way to create numbers that seem random, which is important for things like computer security and making secret codes. Its safety relies on how hard it is to break down large numbers into their prime factors.
Real Number Computation
Blum is also known for the Blum–Shub–Smale machine. This is a special model that helps us understand how computers work with real numbers. Real numbers are numbers that can have many decimal places, like pi.
With her co-authors, Michael Shub and Stephen Smale, she showed that we can define concepts like "NP-completeness" and "undecidability" for this model. These ideas help us understand which problems computers can solve and which are too hard. For example, they showed that it's impossible to decide if a point belongs to the Mandelbrot set using this model.
She also wrote a book about this topic. In 1990, she gave a speech about her work at a big math conference. In 2012, she spoke about her work's connection to Alan Turing's ideas.
Consciousness and Computers
More recently, Lenore Blum has been working with Manuel Blum on a new idea. They are developing a simple computer model for consciousness. This work is inspired by Alan Turing's ideas and a theory of consciousness called the "theater model." She is now the president of the Association for Mathematical Consciousness Science.
Awards and Recognition
Lenore Blum has received many awards for her work.
- In 2002, she was chosen to give the Association for Women in Mathematics Noether Lecture. This is a special lecture honoring women in math.
- In 2005, she received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring. President George W. Bush gave her this award for helping girls and women in technology.
- In 2018, Simmons University gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award.
She was also elected as a Fellow of several important groups:
- The American Association for the Advancement of Science (1979)
- The American Mathematical Society (2012)
- The Association for Women in Mathematics (2017)
In 2024, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Lenore Blum is also featured in a deck of playing cards. These cards highlight famous women mathematicians.
Personal Life
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Lenore Blum is married to Manuel Blum. They have a son named Avrim Blum. All three of them studied at MIT. They have also all been computer science professors at Carnegie Mellon University.
Selected Publications
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See also
In Spanish: Leonore Blum para niños
