Jean Ellen Taylor (born 1944) is an American mathematician who is a

professor emerita ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

and visiting faculty at

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU), and is among the most prestigious mathematics schools and mathematical sciences research cente ...

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

Biography

Taylor was born in Northern California. She did her undergraduate studies 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. ...

, graduating summa cum laude with an A.B. in 1966. She began her graduate studies in chemistry at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, but after receiving an M.Sc. she switched to mathematics under the mentorship of S. S. Chern and then transferred to the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands (county), West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded i ...

and received a second M.Sc. in mathematics there. She completed a doctorate in 1973 from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

under the supervision of

Frederick J. Almgren, Jr. Frederick Justin Almgren Jr. (July 3, 1933 – February 5, 1997) was an American mathematician working in geometric measure theory. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama. Almgren received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974. Between 1963 and 1992 he wa ...

Taylor joined the Rutgers faculty in 1973, and retired in 2002. She was president 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 ...

from 1999 to 2001. She has been married three times, to mathematicians

John Guckenheimer John Mark Guckenheimer (born 1945) joined the Department of Mathematics at Cornell University in 1985. He was previously at the University of California, Santa Cruz (1973-1985). He was a Guggenheim fellow in 1984, and was elected president of the ...

and Fred Almgren, and to financier and science advocate William T. Golden.

Research

Taylor is known for her work on the mathematics of

soap bubble A soap bubble is an extremely thin film of soap or detergent and water enclosing air that forms a hollow sphere with an iridescent surface. Soap bubbles usually last for only a few seconds before bursting, either on their own or on contact wi ...

s and of the growth of

crystal A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituents (such as atoms, molecules, or ions) are arranged in a highly ordered microscopic structure, forming a crystal lattice that extends in all directions. In addition, macros ...

s. In 1976 she published the first proof of

Plateau's laws Plateau's laws describe the structure of soap films. These laws were formulated in the 19th century by the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau from his experimental observations. Many patterns in nature are based on foams obeying these laws. Laws f ...

, a description of the shapes formed by soap bubble clusters that had been formulated without proof in the 19th century by

Joseph Plateau Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (14 October 1801 – 15 September 1883) was a Belgian physicist and mathematician. He was one of the first people to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this, he used counterrotating disks with repea ...

Awards and honors

Taylor is a fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

, the

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 ...

, 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, ...

and the

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 ...

. In 2001, she received an honorary doctorate from Mount Holyoke. In 2017, she was selected as a fellow of the

in the inaugural class.

Selected publications

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References

External links

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Home page at Rutgers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Jean E. Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 1944 births Women mathematicians Mount Holyoke College alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Alumni of the University of Warwick Princeton University alumni Rutgers University faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences faculty Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics 21st-century American mathematicians