Mary Ellen Rudin facts for kids

Mary Ellen Rudin (December 7, 1924 – March 18, 2013) was an American mathematician. She was famous for her important work in a field of math called set-theoretic topology. This area studies the properties of spaces and shapes. In 2013, a special award called the Mary Ellen Rudin Young Researcher Award was created in her honor. It is given every year to a young scientist who does great work in related math fields.

Early Life and Education

Mary Ellen Estill was born in Hillsboro, Texas. Her mother, Irene, was an English teacher. Her father, Joe, was a civil engineer. The family moved often for her father's job. However, Mary Ellen spent much of her childhood near Leakey, Texas. She had one younger brother.

Mary Ellen's family really valued education. Both of her grandmothers on her mother's side went to Mary Sharp College. This college was near their hometown of Winchester, Tennessee. Mary Ellen often talked about how important this family history was to her.

She went to the University of Texas. She finished her bachelor's degree in just three years in 1944. Then, she started her graduate studies in mathematics. Her teacher was Robert Lee Moore. For her Ph.D. thesis, she found an example that showed one of Moore's ideas was not always true. She earned her Ph.D. in 1949.

While she was an undergraduate, she joined the Phi Mu Women's Fraternity. She was also chosen for the Phi Beta Kappa society. This is a very respected academic honor society. In 1953, she married another mathematician, Walter Rudin. They met when she was teaching at Duke University. They had four children together.

Mary Ellen Rudin's Career

Mary Ellen Rudin started her career teaching at Duke University. She also taught at the University of Rochester. In 1959, she became a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin. She was made a full Professor of Mathematics in 1971.

After she retired in 1991, she continued to work as a Professor Emerita. This means she kept her title and could still do research. She was also the first Grace Chisholm Young Professor of Mathematics. She held the Hilidale Professorship too.

Mary Ellen Rudin was asked to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1974. This is a big honor for mathematicians. From 1980 to 1981, she was the vice-president of the American Mathematical Society. In 1984, she was chosen to be a Noether Lecturer. This lecture series celebrates important women in mathematics.

She became an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1995. In 2012, she was named a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. This shows how respected she was in the math world.

Rudin is most famous in topology for building "counterexamples." These are special examples that show a math idea or guess is not true. In 1958, she found a way to show that a certain shape could not be "shelled." This was a big discovery.

Most famously, in 1971, she was the first to create a Dowker space. This proved wrong a guess made by Clifford Hugh Dowker many years before. Her example helped other mathematicians search for similar spaces. She also proved parts of the Morita conjectures. Her last major discovery was proving Nikiel's conjecture. She also found a simpler way to prove that every metric space is paracompact.

A mathematician named Steve Watson once said about her work: "Reading the articles of Mary Ellen Rudin, studying them until there is no mystery takes hours and hours; but those hours are rewarded, the student obtains power to which few have access. They are not hard to read, they are just hard mathematics, that's all."

Later Life

Mary Ellen Rudin lived in Madison, Wisconsin. Her home was the Walter Rudin House. This house was designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Mary Ellen Rudin Young Researcher Award

The Mary Ellen Rudin Young Researcher Award is given out every year. It honors young researchers in general topology and related math fields. The award was started in 2013 by Elsevier. It is given on behalf of the journal Topology and its Applications.

The award includes $15,000 USD. The winner must use this money in specific ways. They use $5,000 for three big conferences in topology. Another $5,000 is for visiting a research center. The last $5,000 can be used freely by the winner.

The award was named after Mary Ellen Rudin. She was one of the most important topologists of the 20th century. Mary Ellen gave her permission for her name to be used. Sadly, she passed away before the first award was given out.

List of Awardees

See also

In Spanish: Mary Ellen Rudin para niños