Marjorie Blake (Marj) Batchelor-Winter is an American mathematician known for her work on coalgebras and supermanifolds. She is an

emeritus ''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 ...

staff member in the department of pure mathematics and mathematical statistics 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 England, where she was formerly the graduate education officer and director of the Cambridge Mathematics Placements summer programme.

Education

Batchelor is the daughter of William Henry Batchelor, a medical researcher and administrator at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

. She graduated from

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...

in 1973, and in 2008 returned to Smith with her husband, Alan Winter, to help revive the tradition of

change ringing Change ringing is the art of ringing a set of tuned bells in a tightly controlled manner to produce precise variations in their successive striking sequences, known as "changes". This can be by method ringing in which the ringers commit to memor ...

at Smith. She became a student of

Bertram Kostant Bertram Kostant (May 24, 1928 – February 2, 2017) was an American mathematician who worked in representation theory, differential geometry, and mathematical physics. Early life and education Kostant grew up in New York City, where he gradua ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, completing her Ph.D. there in 1978 with a dissertation on ''The Structure of Supermanifolds''.

Research

In the theory of supermanifolds, Batchelor's theorem states that every supermanifold can be realized as a sheaf of differential forms over the exterior bundle of a vector bundle. Batchelor published its proof in her 1979 paper, "The structure of supermanifolds".

Activism

At Cambridge, Batchelor became known for her efforts to encourage women in mathematics, and to build a more collegial and interactive atmosphere among the students studying for the

Mathematical Tripos The Mathematical Tripos is the mathematics course that is taught in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. It is the oldest Tripos examined at the University. Origin In its classical nineteenth-century form, the tripos was a ...

References

External links

Home pageMarj Batchelor
Women in Maths, 18 January 2017 {{DEFAULTSORT:Batchelor, Marjorie Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American mathematicians British mathematicians Smith College alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Academics of the University of Cambridge