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Jessica Sklar

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This article is about the mathematician. For the author and philanthropist, see Jessica Seinfeld.

Jessica Katherine Sklar (born 1973)[1] is a mathematician interested in abstract algebra, recreational mathematics, and the popularization of mathematics. She is a professor of mathematics at Pacific Lutheran University, and the head of the mathematics department at Pacific Lutheran.[2]

Education and career

As a high school student, Sklar studied poetry at the Interlochen Arts Academy. She did her undergraduate studies at Swarthmore College, where her parents Elizabeth S. and Lawrence Sklar had met and married (she as an English major, later to become an English professor at Wayne State University, he as a professor of the philosophy of science). She completed a double major in English and mathematics in 1995.[3][4]

Next, Sklar moved to the University of Oregon for graduate study in mathematics, earning a master's degree in 1997 and completing her Ph.D. there in 2001.[2] Her dissertation, Binomial Rings and Algebras, was supervised by Frank Wylie Anderson.[5]

She has been a faculty member in the mathematics department at Pacific Lutheran since 2001.[4]

Contributions

Sklar is the author of an open textbook on abstract algebra, First-Semester Abstract Algebra: A Structural Approach (2017).

With her mother, Elizabeth S. Sklar,[3] she is the editor of Mathematics in Popular Culture: Essays on Appearances in Film, Literature, Games, Television and Other Media (McFarland & Co., 2012).[6]

Recognition

Sklar was a winner of the Carl B. Allendoerfer Award of the Mathematical Association of America in 2011 for her paper with Gene Abrams, The Graph Menagerie: Abstract Algebra and the Mad Veterinarian.[7] The paper provides a general solution to a class of lattice reduction puzzles exemplified by the following one:[3]

"Suppose a mad veterinarian creates a transmogrifier that can convert one cat into two dogs and five mice, or one dog into three cats and three mice, or a mouse into a cat and a dog. It can also do each of these operations in reverse. Can it, through any sequence of operations, convert two cats into a pack of dogs? How about one cat?"

References

  1. ^ Birth year from Library of Congress catalog entry, retrieved 2018-12-02.
  2. ^ a b "Jessica Sklar", Mathematics Faculty and Staff, Pacific Lutheran University, retrieved 2018-11-13
  3. ^ a b c Mackenzie, Dana (January 2013), "1 Plus 1 Makes Engaging Book: Mother and Daughter Bridge Generations and Disciplines", Swarthmore College Bulletin
  4. ^ a b Curriculum vitae (PDF), retrieved 2018-11-13
  5. ^ Jessica Sklar at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  6. ^ Reviews of Mathematics in Popular Culture:
  7. ^ "MAA Awards Presented" (PDF), Mathematics People, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 58 (10): 1464, November 2011
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