Dona Anschel Papert Strauss (born April 1934) is a South African mathematician working in

topology In mathematics, topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformations, such ...

and

functional analysis Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure (e.g. Inner product space#Definition, inner product, Norm (mathematics)#Defini ...

. Her doctoral thesis was one of the initial sources of

pointless topology In mathematics, pointless topology, also called point-free topology (or pointfree topology) and locale theory, is an approach to topology that avoids mentioning points, and in which the lattices of open sets are the primitive notions. In this appr ...

. She has also been active in the political left, lost one of her faculty positions over her protests of the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

, and became a founder of

European Women in Mathematics European Women in Mathematics (EWM) is an international association of women working in the field of mathematics in Europe. The association participates in political and strategic work to promote the role of women in mathematics and offers its mem ...

. Mathematician Neil Hindman, with whom Strauss wrote a book on the

Stone–Čech compactification In the mathematical discipline of general topology, Stone–Čech compactification (or Čech–Stone compactification) is a technique for constructing a universal map from a topological space ''X'' to a compact Hausdorff space ''βX''. The Stone ...

topological semigroup In mathematics, a topological semigroup is a semigroup that is simultaneously a topological space, and whose semigroup operation is continuous.Artur Hideyuki TomitaOn sequentially compact both-sides cancellative semigroups with sequentially continu ...

s, has stated the following as advice for other mathematicians: "Find someone who is smarter than you are and get them to put your name on their papers", writing that for him, that someone was Dona Strauss.

Education and career

Strauss is originally from

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

, the descendant of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Her father was a physicist at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

. She grew up in the

Eastern Cape The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are East London and Gqeberha. The second largest province in the country (at 168,966 km2) after Northern Cape, it was formed in ...

, and earned a master's degree in mathematics at the University of Cape Town. She completed her Ph.D. at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

in 1958. Her dissertation, ''Lattices of Functions, Measures, and Open Sets'', was supervised by

Frank Smithies Frank Smithies FRSE (1912–2002) was a British mathematician who worked on integral equations, functional analysis, and the history of mathematics. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1961. He was an alumnus and an ...

. After completing her doctorate, she took a faculty position at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

. Following her husband's dream of living on a farm in Vermont, she moved to

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

in 1966. By 1972, she was working at the

University of Hull The University of Hull is a public research university in Kingston upon Hull, a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1927 as University College Hull. The main university campus is located in Hull and is home to the Hull ...

and circa 2008 she became a professor at the

University of Leeds , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

. After retiring, she has been listed by Leeds as an honorary visiting fellow.

Activism

In South Africa, Strauss developed a strong antipathy to racial discrimination from a combination of being a Jew at the time of the Holocaust and her own observations of South African society. At the University of Cape Town, she became a member of the

Non-European Unity Movement The Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) is a Trotskyist organisation formed in South Africa in 1943. It had links to the Workers Party of South Africa (WPSA), the first countrywide Trotskyist organisation, and was initially conceived as a broad p ...

. After completing her degree, she left the country in protest over

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

; her parents also left South Africa, after her father's retirement, for Israel. In the 1950s, she regularly published editorial works in '' Socialist Review'', and in the 1960s she was active in

Solidarity (UK) Solidarity was a small libertarian socialist organisation from 1960 to 1992 in the United Kingdom. It published a magazine of the same name. Solidarity was close to council communism in its prescriptions and was known for its emphasis on worke ...

. As an assistant professor at

in 1969, Strauss took part in a student

anti-war An anti-war movement (also ''antiwar'') is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term anti-war can also refer to pa ...

protest that occupied Parkhurst Hall, the building that housed the college administration. In response, Dartmouth announced that Strauss and another faculty protester would not have their contracts renewed, and that they would be suspended from the faculty and "denied all rights and privileges of membership on the Dartmouth faculty", the first time in the college's history that it had taken this step. In 1986, Strauss became one of the five founders of

, together with

Bodil Branner Bodil Branner (born 5 February 1943, in Aarhus) is a retired Danish mathematician, one of the founders of European Women in Mathematics and a former chair of the Danish Mathematical Society. Her research concerned holomorphic dynamics and the h ...

Caroline Series Caroline Mary Series (born 24 March 1951) is an English mathematician known for her work in hyperbolic geometry, Kleinian groups and dynamical systems. Early life and education Series was born on 24 March 1951 in Oxford to Annette and George ...

, Gudrun Kalmbach, and

Marie-Françoise Roy Marie-Françoise Roy (born 28 April 1950 in Paris) is a French mathematician noted for her work in real algebraic geometry. She has been Professor of Mathematics at the University of Rennes 1 since 1985 and in 2009 was made a ''Chevalier'' of the ...

Books

Strauss is the co-author of: *''Algebra in the Stone-Čech compactification: Theory and applications'' (with Neil Hindman, De Gruyter Expositions in Mathematics 27, Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1998; 2nd ed., 2012) *''Banach algebras on semigroups and on their compactifications'' (with H. Garth Dales and Anthony T.-M. Lau, Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society 205, 2010) *''Banach spaces of continuous functions as dual spaces'' (with H. Garth Dales, Frederick K. Dashiell Jr., and Anthony T.-M. Lau, CMS Books in Mathematics, Springer, 2016)

Recognition

In 2009 the University of Cambridge hosted a meeting, "Algebra and Analysis around the Stone-Cech Compactification", in honour of Strauss's 75th birthday.

Personal life

Strauss married (as the first of his four wives)

Seymour Papert Seymour Aubrey Papert (; 29 February 1928 – 31 July 2016) was a South African-born American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator, who spent most of his career teaching and researching at MIT. He was one of the pioneers of artificial ...

. Papert was also South African, and became a co-author and fellow student of Frank Smithies with Strauss at Cambridge. She met her second husband, Edmond Strauss, at the University of London. She is a strong amateur chess player, and was director of the

Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, also known as Adat Shalom Verei’ut (Congregation of Peace and Friendship), is a Liberal synagogue in Hove, Sussex, England. It was established in 1935 and now has more than 300 members. Elizabeth Ti ...

for 2014–2015.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Strauss, Dona 1934 births Living people South African mathematicians South African Jews British women mathematicians 20th-century women mathematicians Functional analysts University of Cape Town alumni Alumni of the University of Cambridge Academics of the University of London Dartmouth College faculty Academics of the University of Hull Academics of the University of Leeds 21st-century British mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians 20th-century South African mathematicians South African emigrants to the United Kingdom 21st-century South African mathematicians 20th-century British mathematicians Topologists