A Woman of Science
Women have made great strides in many intellectual fields, but one area celebrated by an ongoing project at Agnes Scott College in Georgia is the field of mathematicians.
One such woman is Dusa McDuff. Born in London in 1945, Professor McDuffy was also the 1991 winner of the Ruth Lyttle Satter prize and Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Growing up in Scotland with her father, a genetics professor, and her architect mother, she knew from an early age that mathematics would be a big part of her life. Since her mother worked outside the home in a time when this was very unusual, Dusa perhaps found a role-model in this professional woman.
She earned her bachelors degree in math at Cambridge during 1967, afterwards attending graduate school. While at Cambridge McDuff did some of her self-confessed best work in solving a problem about von Nueumann algebras. After living in Russia with her husband for six months, and having a baby, she later returned to Cambridge. She lectured at both York University and the University of Warwick, then spent some time as visiting faculty at M.I.T.
After her divorce, Dusa knew it was time to find herself as a mathematician. For a while she worked alone on various projects and become an associate professor, later remarring and having another child.
From 1984 she has been a professor at SUNY at State University of New York at Stony Brook, and continues her research while also being involved in a number of different projects, including the WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) program.
Currently Dusa McDuff is a member of the American Mathematical Society, and of the Association of Women Scientists, to name just a few. After receiving the first Ruth Lyttle Satter prize for math achievement in 1991 McDuff said: “One important way of combating such isolation [as she experienced] is to make both the achievements of woman mathematicians and the different ways in which we live more visible.”