Katherine A. Heinrich (born 21 February 1954) is a mathematician and mathematics teacher who was the first female president of the

Canadian Mathematical Society The Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) (french: Société mathématique du Canada) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research, outreach, scholarship and education in Canada. It serves the ...

. Her research interests include

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conne ...

and the theory of combinatorial designs. Originally from Australia, she moved to Canada where she worked as a professor at Simon Fraser University and as an academic administrator at the University of Regina.

Education and career

Heinrich was born in Murwillumbah,

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

. As an undergraduate at the University of Newcastle in Australia, she graduated as a University Medalist in 1976. She continued at Newcastle as a graduate student and completed her doctorate there in 1979. Her dissertation, "Some problems on combinatorial arrays", was supervised by Walter D. Wallis. Heinrich joined the mathematics faculty at Simon Fraser University in 1981, and married another graph theorist there,

Brian Alspach Brian Roger Alspach is a mathematician whose main research interest is in graph theory. Alspach has also studied the mathematics behind poker, and writes for ''Poker Digest ''and ''Canadian Poker Player'' magazines. Biography Brian Alspach was bo ...

. She became a full professor in 1987 and chaired the department from 1991 to 1996. While working at Simon Fraser, she co-ordinated several outreach activities including a conference for pre-teen girls called "Women Do Math" and later "Discover the Possibilities", a shopping-center exhibit called "Math in the Malls", and a series of national conferences on mathematics education. From 1996 to 1998, she was the president of the Canadian Mathematical Society, its first female president. In 1999, she moved to the University of Regina as academic vice president and, in 2003, she was confirmed for a second five-year term as vice president. At Regina, she helped to establish an institute for French-language education and built stronger connections between Regina and the First Nations University of Canada. She retired in 2007 and returned to

Newcastle, New South Wales Newcastle ( ; Awabakal: ) is a metropolitan area and the second most populated city in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It includes the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie local government areas, and is the hub of the Greater Newcastle area, w ...

, where she is active in textile arts.

Research

MathSciNet lists 73 publications for Heinrich, dated from 1976 to 2012. Several of her research publications concern orthogonal Latin squares, analogous concepts in

and applications of these concepts in

parallel computing Parallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. There are several different fo ...

. She has also published works on finding spanning subgraphs with constraints on the

degree Degree may refer to: As a unit of measurement * Degree (angle), a unit of angle measurement ** Degree of geographical latitude ** Degree of geographical longitude * Degree symbol (°), a notation used in science, engineering, and mathematics ...

of each vertex and on

Alspach's conjecture Alspach's conjecture is a Theorem, mathematical theorem that characterizes the Edge cycle cover, disjoint cycle covers of complete graphs with prescribed cycle lengths. It is named after Brian Alspach, who posed it as a research problem in 1981. A p ...

on disjoint cycle covers of complete graphs, among other topics.

Selected publications

Recognition

The University of Newcastle gave Heinrich a Gold Medal for Professional Excellence in 1995. In 2005, she won the

Adrien Pouliot Award The Adrien Pouliot Award is presented annually by the Canadian Mathematical Society. The award is presented to individuals or teams in recognition of significant contributions to mathematics education in Canada. The inaugural award was presented i ...

of the Canadian Mathematical Society for her work in mathematics education.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heinrich, Katherine 1954 births Living people Australian mathematicians Australian women mathematicians Canadian mathematicians Graph theorists Mathematics educators University of Newcastle (Australia) alumni Academic staff of Simon Fraser University Academic staff of the University of Regina Presidents of the Canadian Mathematical Society