Maryanthe Malliaris facts for kids

Maryanthe Elizabeth Malliaris is a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago. She is an expert in model theory, which is a part of mathematics that studies mathematical ideas using logic.

Early Life and Education

Maryanthe Malliaris grew up with parents who were also university professors. Her father, Anastasios G. Malliaris, was an economist at Loyola University Chicago. An economist studies how money, goods, and services are made and used. Her mother, Mary E. Malliaris, taught about information systems at the same university.

When she was a student at Harvard College, Maryanthe wrote for the student newspaper, Harvard Crimson. She also helped write a book about a Polish sociologist named Zygmunt Bauman. A sociologist studies how people live and interact in groups. She also worked for a new company called Zaps.

Maryanthe finished her studies at Harvard in 2001, focusing on mathematics. Later, in 2009, she earned her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. A PhD is a very high university degree. Her main project, called a dissertation, was about a complex area of mathematics called "unstable model theory."

Research and Discoveries

Professor Malliaris is known for her important work in mathematics. She studies how different parts of mathematics, like topology (the study of shapes and spaces), set theory (the study of collections of objects), and model theory, are connected.

She worked with another famous mathematician, Saharon Shelah. Together, they solved a big problem in set theory that mathematicians had been trying to figure out for 50 years! Their work helped us understand more about the size of different kinds of infinities.

Awards and Honors

Maryanthe Malliaris has received several awards for her amazing work in mathematics.

• In 2010, she won a Kurt Gödel Research Prize. This award is given to young researchers for excellent work in logic.
• In 2017, she and Saharon Shelah were given the Hausdorff Medal. This special medal is from the European Set Theory Society and honors their joint research.
• She was also invited to speak at the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians. This is a very important event where mathematicians from all over the world share their discoveries.

Selected Publications