Marjorie Lee Senechal (née Wikler, born 1939) is an American mathematician and historian of science, the Louise Wolff Kahn Professor Emerita in Mathematics and History of Science and Technology at

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 ...

and editor-in-chief of ''

The Mathematical Intelligencer ''The Mathematical Intelligencer'' is a mathematical journal published by Springer Verlag that aims at a conversational and scholarly tone, rather than the technical and specialist tone more common among academic journals. Volumes are released qu ...

''. In mathematics, she is known for her work on

tessellation A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane (mathematics), plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called ''tiles'', with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to high-dimensional ...

s and

quasicrystal A quasiperiodic crystal, or quasicrystal, is a structure that is ordered but not periodic. A quasicrystalline pattern can continuously fill all available space, but it lacks translational symmetry. While crystals, according to the classical ...

s; she has also studied ancient

Parthian Parthian may be: Historical * A demonym "of Parthia", a region of north-eastern of Greater Iran * Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD) * Parthian language, a now-extinct Middle Iranian language * Parthian shot, an archery skill famously employed by ...

electric batteries An electric battery is a source of electric power consisting of one or more electrochemical cells with external connections for powering electrical devices. When a battery is supplying power, its positive terminal is the cathode and its negati ...

and published several books about

silk Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoons. The best-known silk is obtained from the coc ...

Biography

Senechal was born in

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...

, the oldest of four children of

Abraham Wikler Abraham Wikler (October 12, 1910 – March 7, 1981). was an American psychiatrist and neurologist who made important discoveries in drug addiction. He was one of the first to promote a view of addiction as conditioned behavior, and made the fir ...

, a

United States Public Health Service The United States Public Health Service (USPHS or PHS) is a collection of agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services concerned with public health, containing nine out of the department's twelve operating divisions. The Assistant S ...

physician. The family soon moved to

Lexington, Kentucky Lexington is a city in Kentucky, United States that is the county seat of Fayette County, Kentucky, Fayette County. By population, it is the List of cities in Kentucky, second-largest city in Kentucky and List of United States cities by popul ...

, and Senechal grew up as a "narco brat" on the grounds of the Lexington Narcotic Hospital, a

prison farm A prison farm (also known as a penal farm) is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts are forced to work on a farm legally and illegally (in the wide sense of a productive unit), usually for manual labor, largely in the open ai ...

for

drug addicts Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to engage in certain behaviors, one of which is the usage of a drug, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences. Repetitive drug use of ...

, where her father was associate director.. She was educated at the Training School of the

University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a Public University, public Land-grant University, land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentu ...

, a small school with only one class in each grade; Senechal later wrote that the school's too-easy classwork, snobbish classmates, and anti-Jewish discrimination made her miserable. She left Lafayette High School after the 11th grade to begin her undergraduate studies as a pre-med at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, but soon switched to mathematics, graduating in 1960.. While doing graduate studies at the

Illinois Institute of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has prog ...

, she married mathematician Lester Senechal, and moved to Arizona with him before completing her own degree. Nevertheless, she finished her Ph.D. in 1965, under the supervision of

Abe Sklar Abe Sklar (November 25, 1925 – October 30, 2020) was an American mathematician and a professor of applied mathematics at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and the inventor of copulas in probability theory. Education and career Sklar ...

; her thesis concerned

functional equation In mathematics, a functional equation is, in the broadest meaning, an equation in which one or several functions appear as unknowns. So, differential equations and integral equations are functional equations. However, a more restricted meaning ...

s. Unable to get her own faculty position at Arizona because of the anti-nepotism rules then in place, she and her husband visited Brazil, supported by a Fulbright Scholarship. They then moved to Massachusetts, where she took the faculty position at Smith that she would keep for the rest of her career. She eventually divorced Senechal, and married photographer Stan Sherer in 1989. She retired in 2007; a festival in 2006 honoring her impending retirement included the performance of a

musical play Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movement ...

that she wrote with The Talking Band member Ellen Maddow, loosely centered around the theme of

aperiodic tiling An aperiodic tiling is a non-periodic tiling with the additional property that it does not contain arbitrarily large periodic regions or patches. A set of tile-types (or prototiles) is aperiodic if copies of these tiles can form only non- peri ...

s and the life of amateur mathematician

Robert Ammann Robert Ammann (October 1, 1946 – May, 1994) was an amateur mathematician who made several significant and groundbreaking contributions to the theory of quasicrystals and aperiodic tilings. Ammann attended Brandeis University, but generally did ...

Awards and honors

Senechal won the

Mathematical Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure a ...

's Carl B. Allendoerfer Award for excellence in expository writing in ''

Mathematics Magazine ''Mathematics Magazine'' is a refereed bimonthly publication of the Mathematical Association of America. Its intended audience is teachers of collegiate mathematics, especially at the junior/senior level, and their students. It is explicitly a j ...

'' in 1982, for her article, "Which Tetrahedra Fill Space?" In 2008, her book ''American Silk 1830 – 1930'' won the Millia Davenport Publication Award of the Costume Society of America.Millia Davenport Publication Award
, Costume Society of America, retrieved 2013-07-15. 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, ...

Books

*''Crystalline Symmetries: An informal mathematical introduction'' (Alan Hilger, 1990) *'' Quasicrystals and Geometry'' (Cambridge University Press, 1995) *''Long Life to Your Children! A portrait of High Albania'' (with S. Sherer, University of Massachusetts Press, 1997) *''Northampton's Century of Silk'' (City of Northampton, Massachusetts, 2004) *''American Silk 1830 – 1930: Entrepreneurs and Artifacts'' (with Jacqueline Field and Madelyn Shaw, Texas Tech University Press, 2007) *''I Died For Beauty:

Dorothy Wrinch Dorothy Maud Wrinch (12 September 1894 – 11 February 1976; married names Nicholson, Glaser) was a mathematician and biochemical theorist best known for her attempt to deduce protein structure using mathematical principles. She was a champion o ...

and the Cultures of Science'' (Oxford University Press, 2012).

References

External links

Home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Senechal, Marjorie Lee 1939 births Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians Scientists from St. Louis Scientists from Missouri Mathematicians from Missouri Historians of science University of Chicago alumni Illinois Institute of Technology alumni Smith College faculty Fellows of the American Mathematical Society 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians 20th-century American women 21st-century American women