Margaret H. Wright (born February 18, 1944) is an American computer scientist and

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 ...

. She is a Silver Professor of Computer Science and former Chair of the Computer Science department 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, th ...

, with research interests in

optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...

linear algebra Linear algebra is the branch of mathematics concerning linear equations such as: :a_1x_1+\cdots +a_nx_n=b, linear maps such as: :(x_1, \ldots, x_n) \mapsto a_1x_1+\cdots +a_nx_n, and their representations in vector spaces and through matrices ...

, and

scientific computing Computational science, also known as scientific computing or scientific computation (SC), is a field in mathematics that uses advanced computing capabilities to understand and solve complex problems. It is an area of science that spans many disc ...

. She was elected to the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

in 1997 for development of numerical optimization algorithms and for leadership in the applied mathematics community. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005. She was the first woman to serve as President of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

Early life and education

Wright was born in San Francisco in 1944, and spent her early childhood in

Hanford, California Hanford is a city and county seat of Kings County, California, located in the San Joaquin Valley region of the greater Central Valley (California), Central Valley. The population was 53,967 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census. History ...

. Both of her parents were medical doctors. At age 10, her family moved to

Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

, where she attended junior and high school. She graduated high school in 1960 at the age of 16. She excelled in school, especially in mathematics. She went to college at Stanford University, one of the few top-ranked universities that accepted women at that time. She was interested in numerous subjects including literature, French, history, and mathematics, and she decided to major in mathematics thanks to some advice that a degree in mathematics would lead to better job opportunities than a degree in English or history. She planned to have a job because her mother had always worked. She received a B.S. degree in Mathematics from Stanford University in 1964. She completed an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1965. After completing her M.S., she worked at GTE Sylvania from 1965-1971 where she wrote software to implement mathematical simulations. As part of this work, she learned about optimization methods such as the newly published Fletcher-Powell method and linear programming. At that time, it was legal for employers to discriminate against women, and she was earning significantly less than men with lower qualifications. For this and other reasons, she decided to return to Stanford in 1971 to earn her Ph.D. Wright entered the Ph.D. program in Computer Science at Stanford University in 1971 and was supported by an assistantship from Gene H. Golub. During her Ph.D. studies, Philip E. Gill and Walter Murray, two researchers from the

National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the national measurement standards laboratory of the United Kingdom. It is one of the most extensive government laboratories in the UK and has a prestigious reputation for its role in setting and mainta ...

, came to visit and ended up having a profound impact on her Ph.D. and career. She served as a teaching assistant for a course taught by Walter Murray and go to know him. When Gill and Murray returned to the UK, she went as well for six months and did much of her dissertation research during this period. She returned to Stanford and obtaining her Ph.D. in 1976. Her thesis was on numerical methods for nonlinearly constrained optimization.

Scientific career

After obtaining her Ph.D. in 1976, Wright joined

George Dantzig George Bernard Dantzig (; November 8, 1914 – May 13, 2005) was an American mathematical scientist who made contributions to industrial engineering, operations research, computer science, economics, and statistics. Dantzig is known for his ...

's Systems Optimization Laboratory (SOL) in the Department of Operations Research at Stanford University as a Senior Research Associate. She was eventually joined at SOL by Gill Murray and Philip Gill, whom she had worked with when she was a graduate student, and

Michael Saunders Michael Edward Brett Saunders (born November 19, 1986) is a Canadian former professional baseball outfielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Seattle Mariners, Toronto Blue Jays, and Philadelphia Phillies. He was nickname ...

. They were known as the "Gang of Four" and published many scientific papers together, always using alphabetical order of their names. In 1984, Karmarkar's algorithm was announced as a polynomial-time algorithm for linear programs, and he came to visit Stanford and present the work. It was immediately clear to the Gang of Four and John Tomlin that this was a special case of barrier methods (the subject of Wright's thesis), and that barrier methods were much more useful than previously believed. In 1988, Wright moved east and joined

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...

, where she was ultimately promoted to Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff. She headed the Scientific Computing Research Department from 1997-2000. She was named a Bell Labs Fellow in 1999. Wright was involved in a number of projects during her years at Bell Labs. She worked in wireless systems engineering. She also investigated the popular

Nelder–Mead method The Nelder–Mead method (also downhill simplex method, amoeba method, or polytope method) is a numerical method used to find the minimum or maximum of an objective function in a multidimensional space. It is a direct search method (based on ...

for derivative-free numerical optimization. In 2001, Wright joined the

as the Silver Professor of Computer Science and a professor of mathematics. She served as Chair of Computer Science from 2001-2009.

Professional Service

Wright has several in numerous service roles including chairing and serving on prize and search committees, serving on a variety of national and international advisory committees, chairing several important reviews, etc. Highlights include the following: From 1995-1996 she served as the (first female) president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). She served on the SIAM Board of Trustees from 2000-2005 and its Council from 1987-1989. She was SIAM Vice President at-large from 1990-1993. From 1999-2004 she was Editor-in-Chief of ''

SIAM Review 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 soci ...

.'' In 2010 she chaired the UK International Review of the Mathematical Sciences, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Counci

Awards and Recognitions

In 1997 she was elected to the

. In 2000 she was selected to deliver the

Noether Lecture The Noether Lecture is a distinguished lecture series that honors women "who have made fundamental and sustained contributions to the mathematical sciences". The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) established the annual lectures in 1980 as t ...

, an award 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 ...

honoring “women who have made fundamental and sustained contributions to the mathematical sciences.” In 2001 she was elected a member 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, a ...

. In 2000 she received the SIAM Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession. In 2002 she received the AMS Award for Distinguished Public Service. In 2002 she became a Fellow of the

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research (O.R.), management science, and analytics. It was established in 1995 with the merger o ...

. In 2003 she received an honorary doctorate (D. Math) from the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to "Uptown" Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also operates ...

. In 2005 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2008 she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Technology by the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden In 2009 she became a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). In 2012 she became a fellow of 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, ...

. In 2013 she was named an honorary member of the London Mathematical Society. In 2016 she was named
Senior Fellow in the Simons Society of Fellows
In 2019 she was awarded the

John von Neumann Prize The John von Neumann Prize (until 2019 named John von Neumann Lecture Prize) was established in 1959 with funds from IBM and other industry corporations, and is awarded for "outstanding and distinguished contributions to the field of applied ma ...

"in recognition of her pioneering contributions to the numerical solution of optimization problems and to the exposition of the subject." Her prize lecture was presented at ICIAM in Valencia, Spain on July 16, 2019.

Publications

A list of her selected publications includes * P. E. Gill, W. Murray, and M. H. Wright, ''Practical Optimization'', Academic Press, 1981,
republished by SIAM in 2019
* P. E. Gill, W. Murray, M. A. Saunders, J. A. Tomlin, and M. H. Wright, On projected newton barrier methods for linear programming and an equivalence to Karmarkar's projective method, ''Mathematical Programming'', Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 183–209, June 1986, doi: 10.1007/bf02592025 * P. E. Gill, W. Murray, and M. H. Wright, ''Numerical Linear Algebra and Optimization'', Addison-Wesley, 1991,
republished by SIAM in 2021
* M. H. Wright, Interior methods for constrained optimization, ''Acta Numerica'', Vol. 1, pp. 341–407, January 1992, doi: 10.1017/S0962492900002300 * J. C. Lagarias, J. A. Reeds, M. H. Wright, and P. E. Wright, Convergence properties of the Nelder—Mead simplex method in low dimensions, ''SIAM Journal on Optimization'', Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 112–147, January 1998, doi: 10.1137/s1052623496303470 * A. Forsgren, P. E. Gill, and M. H. Wright, Interior Methods for Nonlinear Optimization, ''SIAM Review'', Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 525–597, January 2002, doi: 10.1137/S0036144502414942 * M. Wright, The interior-point revolution in optimization: History, recent developments, and lasting consequences, ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'', Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 39–56, September 2004, doi: 10.1090/s0273-0979-04-01040-7

References

External links

INFORMS
Biography of Margaret Wright from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences {{DEFAULTSORT:Wright, Margaret H. American women computer scientists American computer scientists American women mathematicians Scientific computing researchers Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences faculty Stanford University alumni Scientists at Bell Labs Living people Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Presidents of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics 1944 births 21st-century American women Silver professors