Ruth Baker facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ruth Baker
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Nationality | British |
Occupation | Applied mathematician and mathematical biologist |
Known for | Pattern formation, morphogenesis, and the mathematical modeling of cell biology and developmental biology. |
Ruth Elizabeth Baker is a smart British scientist. She uses math to understand how living things grow and change. She works at the University of Oxford.
Ruth is an applied mathematician. This means she uses math to solve real-world problems. She is also a mathematical biologist. This means she uses math to study biology.
Her work helps us understand how patterns form in nature. Think about the stripes on a zebra or the spots on a leopard! She also studies how living things develop from tiny cells into complex creatures. This is called morphogenesis and developmental biology.
Contents
Ruth's Education and Career
Studying Math at Oxford
Ruth Baker studied math at Wadham College, Oxford. This college is part of the famous University of Oxford.
She earned her highest degree, called a doctorate, in 2005. For her doctorate, she wrote a big paper. It was about how patterns form in living things. She looked at how parts of an animal's body develop in a repeating way.
Her teachers, Santiago Schnell and Philip Maini, helped her with this important research.
Working Around the World
After finishing her studies, Ruth traveled for her research. She worked in Germany, the United States, and Australia.
She had a special scholarship from the UK to help her do this research. Later, she came back to Oxford.
Since 2010, she has been a professor of applied mathematics. She teaches at the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford. She is also a special teacher, called a tutorial fellow, at St Hugh's College, Oxford.
Awards and Achievements
Whitehead Prize
In 2014, Ruth Baker won the Whitehead Prize. This is a special award from the London Mathematical Society.
She won it because of her amazing work in mathematical biology. This award shows how important her contributions are to the field.
Leverhulme Research Fellowship
Ruth also received a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2017. This fellowship gave her money to continue her research.
She used it to work on "efficient computational methods for testing biological hypotheses." This means she found clever ways to use computers to test ideas about how living things work.