Linda Keen facts for kids
Linda Jo Goldway Keen (born August 9, 1940, in New York City) is an American mathematician. This means she is an expert in numbers, shapes, and patterns. She is a special member, called a "fellow," of the American Mathematical Society. Since 1965, she has been a professor, teaching math at Lehman College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
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Linda Keen's Journey in Math
As a high school student, Linda Keen attended the Bronx High School of Science. This was a special school for students who loved science. She earned her first college degree, a Bachelor of Science, from the City College of New York.
After that, she continued her studies at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. In 1964, she earned her highest degree, a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), in mathematics. Her special research for this degree was about something called Riemann surfaces. She worked with her teacher, Lipman Bers, at New York University.
Linda Keen has worked at many famous places. These include the Institute for Advanced Study, Columbia University, Princeton University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also worked at math institutes in Europe and South America.
In 1974, she became a Full Professor at Lehman College and the CUNY Graduate Center. She also led the Mathematics Program at the Graduate Center before she retired in 2017.
Linda Keen also helped lead important math groups. She was the president of the Association for Women in Mathematics from 1985 to 1986. She was also a vice-president of the American Mathematical Society from 1992 to 1995. She worked with many other mathematicians, like Paul Blanchard and Robert L. Devaney.
In 1993, she was chosen as a Noether Lecturer by the Association for Women in Mathematics. This is a special honor given to women who have made big contributions to math.
What Linda Keen Studied
Linda Keen has studied many complex math topics. She is known for her work on Riemann surfaces. These are special kinds of shapes that help mathematicians understand complex numbers.
She also worked in hyperbolic geometry. This is a type of geometry that is different from the flat geometry we usually learn. Imagine a saddle shape; that's a bit like hyperbolic geometry.
She also studied Kleinian groups and Fuchsian groups. These are groups of special transformations that help describe complex shapes. She also worked in complex analysis and hyperbolic dynamics. In hyperbolic geometry, she is famous for something called the Collar lemma.
About Her Life
Linda Keen is married to Jonathan Brezin. They live in New York.
Awards and Special Honors
Linda Keen has received many awards and honors for her work:
- AAUW Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, 1964–65
- National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, 1964–65
- Edwin S. Webster-Abby Rockefeller Mauze Award, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1990
- Finnish Mathematical Society Invited Foreign Speaker, January 1991
- Association for Women in Mathematics Emmy Noether Lecturer, 1993
- Joint Irish and London Mathematical Societies Invited Speaker, 1998
- Lehman College Foundation Faculty Award, 1998
- MAA Invited hour Address, Boulder, Colorado, 1989
- Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences Kovalevsky Days Programme Main Speaker, 2006
In 2012, she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. In 2017, she was also chosen as a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics. This was part of the very first group of fellows for this organization.
Books by Linda Keen
Linda Keen has written or helped edit several books about mathematics:
- Hyperbolic Geometry from a Local Viewpoint (with Nikola Lakic, 2007)
- The Legacy of Sonya Kovalevskaya (edited, 1987)
- Chaos and Fractals: The Mathematics Behind the Computer Graphics (edited with Robert L. Devaney, 1989)
- Lipa's Legacy: Proceedings of the 1st Bers Colloquium (edited with Józef Dodziuk, 1997)
- Complex dynamics. Twenty-five years after the appearance of the Mandelbrot set (edited with Robert L. Devaney, 2006)
- Lipman Bers, a Life in Mathematics (edited with Irwin Kra and Rubí E. Rodríguez, 2015)
