Mary-Elizabeth Hamstrom facts for kids
Mary-Elizabeth Hamstrom (born May 24, 1927 – died December 2, 2009) was an important American mathematician. She was known for her work in a field of math called topology. This area of math studies shapes and spaces. She focused on how shapes can be stretched or bent without tearing or gluing them. She also studied groups of transformations called homeomorphism groups, which are ways to change shapes while keeping their basic form. For many years, she was a professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Early Life and Education
Mary-Elizabeth Hamstrom was born in Pittsburgh. She was one of three sisters. She often used the short name M-E, but never Mary.
She went to Germantown High School (Philadelphia). There, she had a math teacher named Anna Mullikin. Anna was also a mathematician. M-E then studied at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1948. She also worked as an assistant there.
After college, M-E decided to continue her studies. She went to the University of Texas at Austin. She worked with a famous math teacher named Robert Lee Moore. He had a special way of teaching math, called the Moore method. He liked to teach students from the very beginning.
Hamstrom earned her Ph.D. (a high-level degree) from the University of Texas at Austin in 1952. Her main project, called a dissertation, was about "Webs in the Plane."
Career and Later Life
After finishing her Ph.D., Hamstrom started teaching. She became a professor at Goucher College. This was a college for women at the time. In 1957, she earned "tenure" there. This means she had a permanent teaching position.
She then visited a special research center called the Institute for Advanced Study. While there, she was encouraged to move to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She took this advice and moved in 1961.
Five years later, the University of Illinois made her a full professor. She was one of only four women with this high rank in her college. She retired from teaching in 1999.
Mary-Elizabeth Hamstrom did most of her important math work between 1950 and 1980. During this time, she wrote 24 papers about topology. She also helped eight students earn their own Ph.D. degrees. Her work helped us better understand shapes and how they can be changed.
