Alena Šolcová (born 26 March 1950) is a Czech mathematician and science historian. She is the founder of the Kepler Museum, an astronomy museum in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

Life and work

Between 1968 and 1973, Šolcová studied mathematics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics and Philosophy at

Charles University ) , image_name = Carolinum_Logo.svg , image_size = 200px , established = , type = Public, Ancient , budget = 8.9 billion CZK , rector = Milena Králíčková , faculty = 4,057 , administrative_staff = 4,026 , students = 51,438 , undergr ...

. Between 2002 and 2005, she completed her doctoral studies in mathematics in Civil Engineering with the doctoral thesis titled '' Fermat's Ideas Revived in Mathematics Applied in Engineering,'' and in 2009 she completed her

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

at the

Czech Technical University in Prague Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU, cs, České vysoké učení technické v Praze, ČVUT) is one of the largest university, universities in the Czech Republic with 8 faculties, and is one of the oldest institutes of technology in Centra ...

, and was appointed associate professor in the field of

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical s ...

. Šolcová works at the Faculty of Information Technologies of the Czech Technical University in Prague, where she teaches mathematical logic and the history of mathematics and computer science. She also deals with logic, number theory, some numerical methods and the history of mathematics, computer science and astronomy. Since 1992, she has led the ''SEDMA'' seminar (Seminar for the History of Mathematics, Informatics and Astronomy) and the working group for the history of exact sciences ''HEXA''. She was the initiator and founder of an astronomy museum, the Kepler Museum in Prague (after its establishment, the museum was managed by the Czech Astronomical Society, in operation from 2009 to 2017). She initiated the establishment of commemorative plaques to

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

on Prague's Old Town Square and another to Austrian mathematician Johann Radon in

Děčín Děčín (; german: Tetschen, 1942–1945: ''Tetschen–Bodenbach'') is a city in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 47,000 inhabitants. It is the 7th largest municipality in the country by area. Administrative parts D ...

, Czech Republic. Šolcová is an honorary member of ''the

Union of Czech Mathematicians and Physicists The Union of Czech mathematicians and physicists ( cs, Jednota českých matematiků a fyziků, JČMF) is one of the oldest learned societies in Czech lands existing to this day. It was founded in 1862 as the Association for free lectures in mathem ...

'' and has served as its chairman beginning in 2018. She is also a member of the editorial board of the ''Czechoslovak Journal for Physics''. She remains an active member of the Czech Mathematical Society and the Czech Society for Cybernetics and Informatics, which provides expertise concerning issues in logic, probability and reasoning.

Honors

* ''The magic of numbers - From great discoveries to applications'', Academia Praha, 2009, 2011, 2018 with co-authors Michal Křížek and Lawrence Somer, was awarded the Hlávká prize for scientific literature in 2010 (First prize). * In 1998, the International Astronomical Union named planet No. 58682 Alenašolcová in her honor.

Selected publications

* Šolcová, Alena, and Michał Křižek. "Fermat And Mersenne Numbers In Pepin's Test1." ''Demonstratio Mathematica'' 39, no. 4 (2006): 737–742. * Křížek, Michal, Alena Šolcová, and Lawrence Somer. "Construction of Šindel sequences." ''Commentationes Mathematicae Universitatis Carolinae'' 48, no. 3 (2007): 373–388. * Solcova, Alena, and Michal Krizek. "Vladimír Vand (1911–1968): Pioneer of Computational Methods in Crystallography." ''IEEE Annals of the History of Computing'' 33, no. 4 (2011): 38–44. * Křížek, Michal, Lawrence Somer, and Alena Šolcová. ''From great discoveries in number theory to applications''. Cham: Springer, 2021.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Solcova, Alena 1950 births Living people Czech mathematicians 20th-century Czech mathematicians 20th-century women mathematicians Charles University alumni Czech Technical University in Prague alumni Czech Technical University in Prague