Nancy Hingston facts for kids

Nancy Hingston is a brilliant American mathematician. She studies complex shapes and spaces using math, a field called differential geometry. She also works in algebraic topology, which uses algebra to understand shapes. She used to be a professor of mathematics at The College of New Jersey, but now she's retired.

Early Life and Education

Nancy Hingston grew up with a strong connection to education. Her father was in charge of schools in Pennsylvania, and her mother taught math and computer science. Nancy loved learning! She went to the University of Pennsylvania and studied two subjects at once: mathematics and physics.

After a year of studying physics in graduate school, she decided to focus completely on math. She earned her highest degree, a PhD, in 1981 from Harvard University. Her teacher and mentor for this degree was a famous mathematician named Raoul Bott.

Her Career in Mathematics

Before joining The College of New Jersey as a professor, Nancy Hingston taught at the University of Pennsylvania. She has also spent a lot of time visiting the Institute for Advanced Study, which is a famous place where smart people do research.

Since 1994, she has been involved with a special program there called the Program for Women and Mathematics. This program helps encourage and support women who want to study math.

Amazing Math Discoveries

Nancy Hingston has made very important discoveries in areas of math like Riemannian geometry and Hamiltonian dynamics. These are complex fields that help us understand how things move and how shapes behave.

Understanding Closed Geodesics

One of her big contributions is about something called "closed geodesics." Imagine you're walking on the surface of a ball. A geodesic is the shortest path between two points. A closed geodesic is like a loop that starts and ends at the same spot, taking the shortest path around the surface.

In her very first paper, she proved that most curved surfaces have an endless number of these closed geodesics. This was a huge discovery! In the 1990s, she also showed how quickly these closed geodesics grow on certain 2-spheres (like the surface of a ball).

Solving the Conley Conjecture

In the 2000s, Nancy Hingston solved a very old and difficult math problem called the Conley conjecture. This problem was about "periodic points" in special systems called Hamiltonian systems.

Think of it like this: if you have a system that changes over time, a periodic point is a state that the system returns to again and again. Nancy Hingston proved that certain types of these systems always have an infinite number of these repeating points. This was a major breakthrough in symplectic geometry.

Awards and Recognition

Nancy Hingston's important work has been recognized by other mathematicians.

In 2014, she was invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians. This is a very big honor, as only the most important mathematicians are asked to speak there.

She is also a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. This means she is recognized for her "contributions to differential geometry and the study of closed geodesics," which are the amazing discoveries she made.

Personal Life

Nancy Hingston is married to Jovi Tenev, who is a lawyer. They have three children.