Carol Lee Walker (born 1935) is a retired American mathematician and mathematics textbook author. Walker's early mathematical research, in the 1960s and 1970s, concerned the theory of

abelian group In mathematics, an abelian group, also called a commutative group, is a group in which the result of applying the group operation to two group elements does not depend on the order in which they are written. That is, the group operation is commut ...

s. In the 1990s, her interests shifted to

fuzzy logic Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth value of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1. It is employed to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely ...

and

fuzzy control system A fuzzy control system is a control system based on fuzzy logic—a mathematical system that analyzes analog input values in terms of logical variables that take on continuous values between 0 and 1, in contrast to classical or digital logic, w ...

Education and career

Walker was born in

Martinez, California Martinez (Spanish language, Spanish: ''Martínez'') is a city and the county seat of Contra Costa County, California, United States, in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Located on the southern shore of the Carquinez Strait, t ...

on August 19, 1935, and went to high school in

Montrose, Colorado Montrose is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Montrose County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 20,291 at the 2020 census, within a total area of 18.5 square miles. The main ...

. She studied

music education Music education is a field of practice in which educators are trained for careers as elementary or secondary music teachers, school or music conservatory ensemble directors. Music education is also a research area in which scholars do origina ...

at the

University of Colorado Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado syst ...

, with a year off to work as a primary-school music teacher in Colorado, and graduated in 1957. Next, she went to the

University of Denver The University of Denver (DU) is a private university, private research university in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1864, it is the oldest independent private university in the Mountain States, Rocky Mountain Region of the United States. It is ...

for graduate study in mathematics, but after one year transferred to

New Mexico State University New Mexico State University (NMSU or NM State) is a public land-grant research university based primarily in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Founded in 1888, it is the oldest public institution of higher education in New Mexico and one of the state's tw ...

, where she earned a master's degree in 1961 and completed her PhD in 1963. Her dissertation, ''On

p^

-pure sequences of abelian groups'', was supervised by

David Kent Harrison David Kent Harrison (6 April 1931, Massachusetts – 21 December 1999, Barnstable, Massachusetts) was an American mathematician, specializing in algebra, particularly homological algebra and valuation theory. He completed his Ph.D. at Princet ...

. After postdoctoral research at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...

, she returned to Mexico State University as an assistant professor in 1964, and quickly earned tenure as an associate professor in 1966. She was promoted to full professor in 1972. She chaired the Department of Mathematical Sciences from 1979 to 1993, and served as associate dean of arts and sciences from 1993 until her retirement in 1996.

Books

Walker is the coauthor of books including: *''Mathematics for the Liberal Arts Student'' (with Fred Richman and Robert J. Wisner, Brooks-Cole, 1967; 2nd ed., 1973; 3rd ed., with James Brewer, Prentice-Hall, 2000; 4th ed., 2003) *''Doing Mathematics with Scientific WorkPlace'' (with Darel Hardy, Brooks-Cole, 1995; multiple editions) *''A First Course in Fuzzy and Neural Control'' (with Hung T. Nguyen, Radipuram Prasad, and Elbert Walker, CRC Press, 2003) *''Applied Algebra: Codes, Ciphers, and Discrete Algorithms'' (with Darel Hardy, Prentice-Hall, 2003) *''Calculus: Understanding Its Concepts and Methods'' (with Darel Hardy, Fred Richman, and Robert J. Wisner, MacKichan Software, 2006)

Recognition

The New Mexico State University alumni gave Walker their Distinguished Alumni Award in 2001.

Personal life

Walker was married to Elbert Walker (1930–2018), another mathematician who joined the New Mexico State University faculty in 1957.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Walker, Carol 1935 births Living people People from Martinez, California American mathematicians American women mathematicians Group theorists University of Colorado Boulder alumni New Mexico State University alumni New Mexico State University faculty