Talk:List of women in mathematics

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to do

To do: add dates, sort by century, alphabetize, annotate with specializations. -- Karada 12:57, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Another place to find notable female mathematicians -- a Google search for the word "she" in the MacTutor History of Mathematics site: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=she+site%3Adcs.st-and.ac.uk Karada 14:07, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Addition?

I would really like to see Nadine Kowalsky (1966-1996) added to this list, but perhaps she tragically died too young to have achieved sufficient fame. Also, note that she was pre-web, so Google is not a reliable indication of her notability. I do consider her a notable female mathematician; she really was quite extraordinary.--RandomHumanoid^(⇒) 17:08, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Generally one has to give some reliable sources indicating her notability. Here is her Mathematical Reviews author profile (2 publications, 28 citations, diff geo). JackSchmidt (talk) 04:17, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some names for you

I have to say that having a page purporting to list women mathematicians and then having the list be so short creates an effect that is opposite to what you may be trying to achieve: i.e., looking at this list someone might think that there have been since antiquity only a small handful of prominent female mathematicians. Of course this is not true.

As a mathematician, I know plenty of eminent female mathematicians. I can give you some names. In fact though it looks like no one has taken the trouble to go through the list of mathematicians already on wikipedia and link the women to this page. If no one wants to the work, maybe the page should be temporarily deleted. Anyway:

Marie-France Vigneras, Bernadette Perrin-Riou, ~~Marina Ratner~~, ~~Maryam Mirzakhani~~, Karen Smith, ~~Susan Howson~~, ~~Nina Snaith~~, Izabella Laba, Cathleen Synge Morawitz, ~~Fan Chung~~, ~~Melanie Wood~~, Lillian Pierce —Preceding unsigned comment added by Plclark (talk • contribs) 2007-08-15T05:00:35Z

Some of these are now done. I've marked them out with a strikeout. I've checked the others, and there do not seem to be articles on them. JackSchmidt (talk) 04:15, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Idun Reiten

What about Idun Reiten? Together with Maurice Auslander and others, she has worked out a representation theory for algebras, called the Auslander-Reiten Theory. I could have listed some of her prizes and so on, but I believe someone not studing at her university should look through it -- and not me. 193.71.104.85 (talk) 07:38, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is now done. I've noticed a certain bias too: Maurice Auslander is still a redlink. It seems that representation theorists like Dave Benson, Lluis Puig, Jonathon Alperin, etc. are still redlinks too. Hopefully this can be fixed too. JackSchmidt (talk) 04:05, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Organization

Chronological is very visually confusing. Alphabetical will be easier to read but will remove information. I've considered grouping by mathematical speciality, but some mathematicians, especially ancients like Theano, are impossible to classify. I think I will expand the list alphabetically. Any suggestions for display? --Danger (talk) 02:19, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I preferred the chronological listing, but I agree it needed something to make it clearer. Headings would help, but figuring how to divide up the time might be hard. I agree that speciality would be useful but difficult to impossible. Certainly your changes improved the article, but if we can think of a way to restore the "here are the ancient ones, and here are the contemporary ones" method of access, I think it would be good to try it. A table could be sortable, but I'm not sure it would be appropriate. JackSchmidt (talk) 04:01, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dubious?

I'm not sure how anyone can consider the claim that women are underrepresented in Mathematics as "dubious." Wikipedia's data here Mathematician#Doctoral_degree_statistics_for_mathematicians_in_the_United_States says that in 2000, 30% of doctoral recipients were female. Take also this article in Scientific American (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=women-tenured-science-professors) which says that as of 2003, 26.5 percent of assistant math professors and 9.7 percent of full professors are female (I assume this is also in the US). Consider also the William_Lowell_Putnam_Mathematical_Competition, the most prestigious undergraduate mathematics competition in the USA. Only three women have every been Putnam fellows (top five). And don't forget that the Fields Medal, the so-called "Nobel prize of mathematics" has never been given to a woman. Given the above, I have removed the "dubious" tag. Crito2161 (talk) 18:18, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The claim is almost inherently subjective. The word "underrepresented" implies that women should be represented in Mathematics at some higher level than they are, but what determines the level at which women should be represented and why "should" they be represented at that level? Surely you would agree that a statement such as "Lawyers are underrepresented in Mathematics" would be ridiculous: what precisely makes the equivalent statement about women different in your opinion?JudahH (talk) 03:00, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

At the time of writing this, there are 123 names of female mathematicians mentioned in this article. A cursory glance of Wikipedia's numerous articles on the entire subject (of mathematicians) returns over 1,477 names of male mathematicians. There are likely very many more, but - as stated - it was a cursory glance. This difference of scope brings me to question why this page deserves its singularity; i.e., Why is there an article specifically for women mathematicians, when the overwhelming majority of mathematicians across the planet and throughout human history are/have been male? As mentioned by the previous writer: creating a separate article just for women and then proceeding to populate it with so few names has rather the opposite effect as was quite-likely intended. I don't mean to sound as if I am saying "If women have a specific page, men should too!" - that would be quite silly - but is it not equally silly (and by the same token) to create an entire Wikipedia article to the sole devotion of mathematicians of one gender? - to separate them from their colleagues, not because of notability or achievement, but simply because they possess certain genitalia? I do not see the issue with simply adding these names (of women) to the already-existing names of mathematicians (not idolised by gender). It seems to me the only reasonable separation that should exist in a list of mathematicians, would be based upon their particular fields of study (which Wikipedia has already done), or based upon the level of impact their work had in the world at large. User 12:21, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Funnily enough, a field in Mathematics deals with categories and whether Women like Lawyers are underrepresented is a misleading question. Given it's a question about a specific demographic, not the overlap of career choices, the two items aren't equals. It's also not even a subjective term, you could work it out within margins of standard deviation to know if there is an upward or downward bias, or how the dynamic systems of human interaction can lead people with one trait towards the back-end of a distribution. The interpretation how the data could be used would be subjective, but a smaller quantity of mathematicians who are women would be evident. Without any context and only having magnitudes to compare I take the norm distribution as a percentage to be 44.5%-56.5 as heuristic, without any other other context the 30% of awards given would be a low value and would be worthy of looking into. 86.184.177.211 (talk)JulianSpade — Preceding undated comment added 19:41, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Redlinks

I have removed all the redlink names from this page, Any name which meets the WP:N requirements can and should be added but this is not a place to add the name of every female mathematics graduate or college lecturer. Plutonium27 (talk) 12:07, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mileva Maric a mathematician?

I am unclear on what grounds Mileva Maric is included in this list of mathematicians. She failed the Zurich Polytechnic (now ETH) diploma for teaching physics and mathematics in 1900 with a very poor grade in the mathematics component (2.5 on a scale 1-6). She only improved her mathematics grade moderately (3.5 on a scale 1-6) when she retook the exam (which she again failed, without improving her overall grade average). Nor is there any known mathematical work by Maric beyond her Polytechnic studies. [Refs: Albert Einstein Collected Papers, vol 1, Doc. 67; J. Stachel, Einstein From B to Z (2002), p. 29.]

In my view, there is a danger of bringing the list into disrepute if dubious examples are included among otherwise well-merited entries. Esterson (talk) 09:56, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Given the lack of any response to the above, I shall delete Mileva Maric from the list. Esterson (talk) 10:06, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

female mathematicians vs. women mathematicians

Why is this list in "Category:Women mathematicians"? Shouldn't it be also "female mathematicians", or the worse option, the list to "List of women mathematicians"? I don't understand why those are not same. 85.217.41.106 (talk) 17:30, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]