Deborah J. Hughes Hallett is a mathematician who works as a professor of mathematics at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

. Her expertise is in the undergraduate teaching of mathematics. She has also taught as Professor of the Practice in the Teaching of Mathematics at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, and continues to hold an affiliation with Harvard as Adjunct Professor of Public Policy in the

John F. Kennedy School of Government The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), officially the John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the school of public policy and government of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school offers master's degrees in public policy, public ...

Education and career

Hughes Hallett earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

in 1966, and a master's degree from Harvard in 1976. She worked as a preceptor and senior preceptor at Harvard from 1975 to 1991, as an instructor at the Middle East Technical University in

Ankara Ankara ( , ; ), historically known as Ancyra and Angora, is the capital of Turkey. Located in the central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5.1 million in its urban center and over 5.7 million in Ankara Province, maki ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

from 1981 to 1984, and as a faculty member at Harvard from 1986 to 1998. She served as Professor of the Practice in the Teaching of Mathematics at Harvard from 1991 to 1998. She moved to Arizona in 1998, and took on her adjunct position at the Kennedy School in 2001.

Work on calculus reform

With

Andrew M. Gleason Andrew Mattei Gleason (19212008) was an American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to widely varied areas of mathematics, including the solution of Hilbert's fifth problem, and was a leader in reform and innovation in teaching at ...

at Harvard she was a founder of the Calculus Consortium, a project for the reform of undergraduate teaching in calculus. Through the consortium, she is an author of a successful and influential sequence of high school and college mathematics textbooks. However, the project has also been criticized for omitting topics such as the mean value theorem, and for its perceived lack of mathematical rigor.

Recognition

She was an

invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians This is a list of International Congresses of Mathematicians Plenary and Invited Speakers. Being invited to talk at an International Congress of Mathematicians has been called "the equivalent, in this community, of an induction to a hall of fame." ...

in 1994. She won the Louise Hay Award for Contributions to Mathematics Education of the

Association for Women in Mathematics The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a professional society whose mission is to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment o ...

in 1998, and was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1998. She is a two-time winner of the ICTCM Award, in 1998 for her internet-based course "Information, Data and Decisions" and in 2000 for "Computer Texts for Business Mathematics". In October 2021, the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

named her as the recipient of the 2022 Award for Impact on the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hughes Hallett, Deborah J. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians British mathematicians American women mathematicians Mathematics educators University of Arizona faculty Harvard University faculty Harvard University alumni Alumni of the University of Cambridge 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians 20th-century American women Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 21st-century American women