Martha Jochnowitz Siegel is an American

applied 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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, probability theorist and mathematics educator who served as the editor of ''

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 ...

'' from 1991 to 1996. In 2017 she won the Yueh-Gin Gung and Dr. Charles Y. Hu Award for Distinguished Service of 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 ...

for "her remarkable leadership in guiding the national conversation on undergraduate mathematics curriculum". She was a faculty member in the mathematics department of

Towson University Towson University (TU or Towson) is a public university in Towson, Maryland. Founded in 1866 as Maryland's first training school for teachers, Towson University is a part of the University System of Maryland. Since its founding, the university h ...

from 1971 until 2015, when she became a

professor emerita ''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 ...

Education and career

Siegel grew up in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, the daughter of civil engineer Nat Jochnowitz. She became interested in mathematics through her father's interest in mathematical puzzles, and through the calculation of

baseball statistics Baseball statistics play an important role in evaluating the progress of a player or team. Since the flow of a baseball game has natural breaks to it, and normally players act individually rather than performing in clusters, the sport lends itsel ...

for the

Brooklyn Dodgers The Brooklyn Dodgers were a Major League Baseball team founded in 1884 as a member of the American Association (19th century), American Association before joining the National League in 1890. They remained in Brooklyn until 1957, after which the ...

. She did her undergraduate studies in mathematics at

Russell Sage College Russell Sage College (often Russell Sage or RSC) is a co-educational college with two campuses located in Albany and Troy, New York, approximately north of New York City in the Capital District. Russell Sage College offers both undergraduate ...

, a small

women's college Women's colleges in higher education are undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting institutions, often liberal arts colleges, whose student populations are composed exclusively or almost exclusively of women. Some women's colleges admit male stud ...

Troy, New York Troy is a city in the U.S. state of New York and the county seat of Rensselaer County. The city is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany a ...

, while also taking classes at the nearby men-only

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute () (RPI) is a private research university in Troy, New York, with an additional campus in Hartford, Connecticut. A third campus in Groton, Connecticut closed in 2018. RPI was established in 1824 by Stephen Van ...

, as at that time Russell Sage had no mathematics department. At Russell Sage, she was a Kellas honor student, and president of the science club. She completed her Ph.D. in 1969 at the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The University of Roc ...

; her dissertation, ''On Birth and Death Processes'', was supervised by

Johannes Kemperman Johannes Henricus Bernardus Kemperman (July 16, 1924 – June 13, 2011) was a Dutch mathematician. He taught at the University of Rochester for 25 years, and also worked at Purdue University and Rutgers University for ten years, each. Born in Am ...

. During graduate school and until her 1971 move to Towson, she was on the faculty at

Goucher College Goucher College ( ') is a private liberal arts college in Towson, Maryland. It was chartered in 1885 by a conference in Baltimore led by namesake John F. Goucher and local leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church.https://archive.org/details/h ...

Contributions

At Towson, in 1981, Siegel founded an innovative and still-ongoing undergraduate applied mathematics program involving projects connected to local business and government. She is a co-author of the

discrete mathematics Discrete mathematics is the study of mathematical structures that can be considered "discrete" (in a way analogous to discrete variables, having a bijection with the set of natural numbers) rather than "continuous" (analogously to continuous f ...

and

precalculus In mathematics education, precalculus is a course, or a set of courses, that includes algebra and trigonometry at a level which is designed to prepare students for the study of calculus. Schools often distinguish between algebra and trigonometr ...

textbooks ''Finite Mathematics and Its Applications'' and ''Functioning in the Real World''. She also served as chair of a committee of the Mathematical Association of America charged with producing the 2015 edition of their ''MAA Curriculum Guide to Undergraduate Majors in the Mathematical Sciences''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Siegel, Martha Jochnowitz Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians Probability theorists Mathematics educators Russell Sage College alumni University of Rochester alumni Goucher College faculty and staff Towson University faculty 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians 20th-century American women 21st-century American women