Victoria Powers facts for kids

Victoria Ann Powers (1958 – February 2, 2025) was an American mathematician. She was known for her work with numbers and shapes, especially how they relate to electoral systems (how people vote and how votes are counted). She also studied "positive polynomials," which are special math expressions that always result in a positive number.

Powers was a professor in the math department at Emory University, where she taught starting in 1987. She also wrote a book called Certificates of Positivity for Real Polynomials—Theory, Practice, and Applications (Springer, 2021). A review said her book was "a very nice and concise presentation of the most important pillars of real algebra."

Life of a Mathematician

Powers graduated from the University of Chicago in 1980 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. She then went on to earn her Ph.D. (a very advanced degree) in 1985 from Cornell University. Her main research project was called Finite Constructable Spaces of Signatures.

After finishing her studies, she taught at the University of Hawaiʻi. Two years later, in 1987, she joined the faculty at Emory University.

Powers also spent time working and researching in other places. She was a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Regensburg in Germany from 1991 to 1992. She was also a visiting professor in Spain at the Complutense University of Madrid from 2002 to 2003. From 2013 to 2015, she worked as a program officer at the National Science Foundation, which helps fund scientific research.

From 2012 to 2014, Powers was a Council Member for the American Mathematical Society. This is an important group for mathematicians in the United States.

Powers' work changed over time. She started with very complex math about shapes and numbers. Later, she focused on more practical questions about positive polynomials and how voting systems work. She worked with many other mathematicians, including Bruce Reznick and Eberhard Becker.

Powers was married to Colm Mulcahy, who was also a mathematician. She passed away on February 2, 2025, due to complications from ALS, a serious illness that affects the body's muscles.

Achievements and Awards

In May 2024, Vicki Powers received a special award from Emory University. It was called the George P. Cuttino Award. This award is given to professors who are excellent at mentoring, which means guiding and supporting students.