Nancy Kopell facts for kids

Nancy Jane Kopell (born November 8, 1942, New York City) is an American mathematician and professor at Boston University. She uses math to understand how the brain works.

Nancy Kopell helps lead the Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology (CompNet). She also started and directs the Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative (CRC). This group studies how brain rhythms affect thinking.

She earned her first degree from Cornell University in 1963. Then, she got her Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 1967. Her work helps us understand brain activity and diseases like Parkinson's disease and epilepsy.

About Nancy Kopell's Life

Early Life and School Days

Nancy Kopell was born on November 8, 1942, in the Bronx, New York. Her father was an accountant. Her mother and older sister also studied mathematics.

When she was a child, Nancy had a serious eye problem. This taught her how to handle being "different." This skill helped her later as a female scientist. She felt like an outsider sometimes, but she learned to deal with it.

Her high school teachers encouraged her to study math. She went to Cornell University for her first degree. She was the only girl in the math honors program there. Nancy graduated from Cornell in 1963.

She decided to go to graduate school to find a different path for her life. She chose to attend the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her Master's degree and her Ph.D. in 1967.

At Berkeley, she was known as a very bright student. She worked with professor Stephen Smale on her Ph.D. project. She solved a difficult math problem almost by herself. This work helped launch her career in science.

Her Career in Science

After finishing her studies, Nancy Kopell taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There, she worked with another scientist, Lou Howard. They published several research papers together.

Later, she met her husband, Gabriel Stolzenberg, at Northeastern University. Nancy started her career in pure math, but she later switched to applied math. Applied math uses math to solve real-world problems.

In 1969, she became a professor at Northeastern University. She became a full professor in 1978. In 1986, she moved to Boston University. In 2009, she became the first woman at Boston University to be named a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor.

In 1990, she received a special award called the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. This award recognized her work in using math to study brain problems.

Today, she leads the Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative. This group includes many labs in the Boston area. They study how the brain's rhythms affect thinking and memory. She also helps lead the Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology (CompNet).

Nancy Kopell is a member of important science groups like the National Academy of Sciences. She has also received many other awards and given important lectures.

Awards and Recognitions

Nancy Kopell has received many honors for her work:

• 1975 Sloan Fellowship
• 1984 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1990 MacArthur Fellowship
• 1996 Member of the National Academy of Sciences
• 1996 Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2007 John von Neumann Lecture
• 2011 Honorary Member of the London Mathematical Society
• 2015 Mathematical Neuroscience Prize
• 2016 Swartz Prize

See also

• Ermentrout and Kopell Canonical Model