Dorothy Lewis Bernstein (April 11, 1914 – February 5, 1988) was an American

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

known for her work in

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 ...

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...

computer programming Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as ana ...

, and her research on the

Laplace transform In mathematics, the Laplace transform, named after its discoverer Pierre-Simon Laplace (), is an integral transform In mathematics, an integral transform maps a function from its original function space into another function space via integra ...

. She was the first woman to be elected president of the

Mathematics Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure a ...

.MAA presidents: Dorothy Lewis Bernstein
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Early life

Dorothy Bernstein was born in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, the daughter of Jewish Russian immigrants Jacob and Tille Lewis Bernstein. While her parents had no formal education, they encouraged all of their children to seek education; all five earned either a PhD or MD.

Education

Bernstein attended North Division High School (Milwaukee) in

Milwaukee Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

. In 1930 she attended the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

, where she held a University Scholarship (1933–1934) and was elected to

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

. In 1934 she graduated with both a B.A degree, summa cum laude, and a M.A. Degree in Mathematics. She did her master's thesis research on finding complex roots of polynomials by an extension of

Newton's method In numerical analysis, Newton's method, also known as the Newton–Raphson method, named after Isaac Newton and Joseph Raphson, is a root-finding algorithm which produces successively better approximations to the roots (or zeroes) of a real-valu ...

. In 1935 she attended

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

, where she became a member of the scientific society

Sigma Xi Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society () is a highly prestigious, non-profit honor society for scientists and engineers. Sigma Xi was founded at Cornell University by a junior faculty member and a small group of graduate students in 1886 ...

. She received her Ph.D. in mathematics from Brown in 1939, while simultaneously holding a teaching position at

Mount Holyoke College Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United States. ...

. Her dissertation was entitled "The Double Laplace Integral" and was published in the ''

Duke Mathematical Journal ''Duke Mathematical Journal'' is a peer-reviewed mathematics journal published by Duke University Press. It was established in 1935. The founding editors-in-chief were David Widder, Arthur Coble, and Joseph Miller Thomas Joseph Miller Thomas (16 ...

''.

Career

From 1943 to 1959 Bernstein taught at the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The University of Roc ...

, where she worked on existence theorems for

partial differential equations In mathematics, a partial differential equation (PDE) is an equation which imposes relations between the various partial derivatives of a multivariable function. The function is often thought of as an "unknown" to be solved for, similarly to ...

. Her work was motivated by non-linear problems that were just being tackled by high-speed digital computers. In 1950, Princeton University Press published her book, ''Existence Theorems in Partial Differential Equations''. She spent 1959–1979 as a professor of mathematics at

Goucher College Goucher College ( ') is a private liberal arts college in Towson, Maryland. It was chartered in 1885 by a conference in Baltimore led by namesake John F. Goucher and local leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church.https://archive.org/details/h ...

, where she was chairman of the mathematics department for most of that time (1960–70, 1974–79). She professed that she was particularly interested combining pure and applied mathematics in the undergraduate curriculum. Due in great part to Bernstein's ability to get grants from the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

, Goucher College was the first women's university to use computers in mathematics instruction, beginning in 1961. She also developed an internship program for Goucher mathematics students to obtain meaningful employment experience. In 1972 Bernstein cofounded the Maryland Association for Educational Uses of Computers, and was interested in incorporating computers into secondary school mathematics. Bernstein was very active in the

Mathematical Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure a ...

, where she was on the board of governors from 1965 to 1968. She served as the vice president in 1972–73, and later became the first female president of the MAA in 1979–80.

Women in mathematics

She noted that attitudes and opportunities for women changed drastically after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, which she attributed to two causes. First, that women demonstrated they could handle the jobs formerly held by men, and second that the rise of computer technology opened up many new areas of mathematical applications resulting in new jobs.

Memberships

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, ...

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific socie ...

American Association of University Professors The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is an organization of professors and other academics in the United States. AAUP membership includes over 500 local campus chapters and 39 state organizations. The AAUP's stated mission is ...

* Fellow,

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

, 1981

Bibliography

* .

References

External links

"Dorothy Lewis Bernstein", Biographies of Women Mathematicians

Agnes Scott College Agnes Scott College is a private women's liberal arts college in Decatur, Georgia. The college enrolls approximately 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The college is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church and is considered one of the ...

* Biography on p. 77-80 of th
Supplementary Material
a
AMS
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bernstein, Dorothy 1914 births 1988 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians American people of Russian-Jewish descent Brown University alumni Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Presidents of the Mathematical Association of America University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni American women mathematicians Goucher College faculty and staff Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 20th-century women mathematicians North Division High School (Milwaukee) alumni 20th-century American women Mount Holyoke College faculty