Leila Ann Dragonette Bram (1927–September 7, 1979) was an American mathematician. She was one of the first to study

mock theta function In mathematics, a mock modular form is the holomorphic part of a harmonic weak Maass form, and a mock theta function is essentially a mock modular form of weight . The first examples of mock theta functions were described by Srinivasa Ramanu ...

s, and for many years directed the mathematics program at the

Office of Naval Research The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is an organization within the United States Department of the Navy responsible for the science and technology programs of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Established by Congress in 1946, its mission is to plan ...

, a position where she set the program for much of mathematics research.

Early life and education

Bram was born in 1927, in

Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania Drexel Hill is a neighborhood and census-designated place (CDP) located in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. The population was 29,181 at the 2020 census, up from 28,043 at the 2010 census, and accounting for over a third of Upper Darby's population. G ...

, and was educated at the

Lansdowne High School Lansdowne High School (LHS), formerly known as Lansdowne Sr. High School, and currently known as the Lansdowne High School Academy for Advanced Professional Studies, is a four-year public high school in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

. As an undergraduate at

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United St ...

, she double-majored in mathematics and physics, won the Maria L. Eastman Brooke Hall Memorial Scholarship and European Fellowship, the college's highest honor, and did an honors thesis on

beta ray A beta particle, also called beta ray or beta radiation (symbol β), is a high-energy, high-speed electron or positron emitted by the radioactive decay of an atomic nucleus during the process of beta decay. There are two forms of beta decay, β� ...

spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter wa ...

. She graduated in 1947. She went to the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

for graduate study in mathematics, earning a master's degree and a Ph.D. there. Her 1951 doctoral dissertation, ''Asymptotic Formula for the Mock Theta Series of Ramanujan'', was supervised by

Hans Rademacher Hans Adolph Rademacher (; 3 April 1892, Wandsbeck, now Hamburg-Wandsbek – 7 February 1969, Haverford, Pennsylvania, USA) was a German-born American mathematician, known for work in mathematical analysis and number theory. Biography Rademacher r ...

; it (and the journal version she published from it) became one of only three works to study the mock theta functions between Ramanujan in the 1920s and the work of George Andrews beginning in 1966.

Career and later life

After completing her Ph.D., Bram became a postdoctoral fellow at the Office of Naval Research, and took a permanent position as a mathematician there beginning in 1953, from which she was on leave from 1955 to 1959. At the Office of Naval Research, she later headed the Mathematics Bureau, and then the Mathematics Program. Among her projects there was the establishment of a conference series connecting

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great de ...

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

that became the International Conferences on Computer Aided Geometric Design. She died of cancer on September 7, 1979.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bram, Leila 1927 births 1979 deaths American mathematicians American women mathematicians Bryn Mawr College alumni University of Pennsylvania alumni