Mary Ellen Rudin (December 7, 1924 – March 18, 2013) was an American

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 ...

known for her work in

set-theoretic Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory, as a branch of mathematics, is mostly concern ...

topology In mathematics, topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformations, such ...

. In 2013,

Elsevier Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...

established the

Mary Ellen Rudin Young Researcher Award Mary Ellen Rudin (December 7, 1924 – March 18, 2013) was an American mathematician known for her work in set-theoretic topology. In 2013, Elsevier established the Mary Ellen Rudin Young Researcher Award, which is awarded annually to a young rese ...

, which is awarded annually to a young researcher, mainly in fields adjacent to

general topology In mathematics, general topology is the branch of topology that deals with the basic set-theoretic definitions and constructions used in topology. It is the foundation of most other branches of topology, including differential topology, geomet ...

Early life and education

Mary Ellen (Estill) Rudin was born in

Hillsboro, Texas Hillsboro is a city in and the county seat of Hill County, Texas, Hill County, Texas, United States. The population was 8,221 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. History Hillsboro was named for Hill County. At one point during Bon ...

to Joe Jefferson Estill and Irene (Shook) Estill. Her mother Irene was an English teacher before marriage, and her father Joe was a civil engineer. The family moved with her father's work, but spent a great deal of Mary Ellen's childhood around

Leakey, Texas Leakey ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Real County, Texas, United States. The population was 425 at the 2010 census. The city is named for John H. Leakey (1824–1900), a pioneer from Tennessee. The Alto Frio Baptist Encampment is locate ...

.Albers, D.J. and Reid, C. (1988) "An Interview with Mary Ellen Rudin". ''The College of Mathematics Journal'' 19(2) pp.114-137 She had one sibling, a younger brother. Both of Rudin's maternal grandmothers had attended

Mary Sharp College Mary Sharp College (1851–1896), first known as the Tennessee and Alabama Female Institute, was a Women's Colleges in the Southern United States, women's college, located in Winchester, Tennessee. It was named after the Abolitionism in the United ...

near their hometown of

Winchester, Tennessee Winchester is a city in and the county seat of Franklin County, Tennessee, Franklin County, Tennessee, United States. It is part of the Tullahoma, Tennessee Tullahoma micropolitan area, Micropolitan Statistical Area. The population of Winchester as ...

. Rudin remarks on this legacy and how much her family valued education in an interview. She attended the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

, completing her B.A. in 1944 after just three years before moving into the graduate program in mathematics under

Robert Lee Moore Robert Lee Moore (November 14, 1882 – October 4, 1974) was an American mathematician who taught for many years at the University of Texas. He is known for his work in general topology, for the Moore method of teaching university mathematics, ...

. Her graduate thesis presented a counterexample to one of "Moore's axioms". She completed her Ph.D. in 1949. During her time as an undergraduate, she was a member of the

Phi Mu Phi Mu () is the second oldest female fraternal organization established in the United States. The fraternity was founded at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia as the Philomathean Society on , and was announced publicly on March 4 of the same ye ...

Women's Fraternity, and was elected to the

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

society. In 1953, she married mathematician

Walter Rudin Walter may refer to: People * Walter (name), both a surname and a given name * Little Walter, American blues harmonica player Marion Walter Jacobs (1930–1968) * Gunther (wrestler), Austrian professional wrestler and trainer Walter Hahn (born 19 ...

, whom she met while teaching at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

. They had four children.

Career

At the beginning of her career, Rudin taught at Duke University and 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 ...

."Mary Ellen Rudin", Profiles of Women in Mathematics. Association of Women in Mathematic

Accessed March 13, 2015. She took a position as Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, University of Wisconsin in 1959, and was appointed Professor of Mathematics in 1971. After her retirement in 1991, she continued to serve as a Professor Emerita. She was the first Grace Chisholm Young Professor of Mathematics and also held the Hilidale Professorship,. She was an Invited Speaker of the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rename ...

in 1974 in Vancouver. She served as vice-president 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, ...

, 1980–1981. In 1984 she was selected to be a

Noether Lecturer 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 ...

. She was an honorary member of the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( hu, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, MTA) is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. Its ma ...

(1995). In 2012 she became a fellow of the

. Rudin is best known in

for her constructions of counterexamples to well-known conjectures. In 1958, she found an unshellable

triangulation In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to the point from known points. Applications In surveying Specifically in surveying, triangulation involves only angle me ...

of the

tetrahedron In geometry, a tetrahedron (plural: tetrahedra or tetrahedrons), also known as a triangular pyramid, is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, six straight edges, and four vertex corners. The tetrahedron is the simplest of all the o ...

. Most famously, Rudin was the first to construct a

Dowker space In the mathematical field of general topology, a Dowker space is a topological space that is T4 but not countably paracompact. They are named after Clifford Hugh Dowker. The non-trivial task of providing an example of a Dowker space (and therefor ...

, which she did in 1971, thus disproving a conjecture of

Clifford Hugh Dowker Clifford Hugh Dowker (; March 2, 1912 – October 14, 1982) was a topologist known for his work in point-set topology and also for his contributions in category theory, sheaf theory and knot theory. Biography Clifford Hugh Dowker grew up on a sm ...

that had stood, and helped drive topological research, for more than twenty years. Her example fueled the search for "small" ZFC Dowker spaces. She also proved the first Morita conjecture and a restricted version of the second. Her last major result was a proof of

Nikiel's conjecture In mathematics, Nikiel's conjecture in general topology was a conjectural characterization of the continuous image of a compact space, compact total order. The conjecture was first formulated by in 1986. The conjecture was proven by Mary Ellen Ru ...

. Early proofs that every metric space is

paracompact In mathematics, a paracompact space is a topological space in which every open cover has an open refinement that is locally finite. These spaces were introduced by . Every compact space is paracompact. Every paracompact Hausdorff space is normal, ...

were somewhat involved, but Rudin provided an elementary one. "Reading the articles of Mary Ellen Rudin, studying them until there is no mystery takes hours and hours; but those hours are rewarded, the student obtains power to which few have access. They are not hard to read, they are just hard mathematics, that's all." (Steve Watson)

Later life

Rudin resided in

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...

, in the Rudin House, a home designed by architect

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...

Publications

* *

Mary Ellen Rudin Young Researcher Award

The Mary Ellen Rudin Young Researcher Award is an annual award given to young researchers in

and its related fields. It was established in 2013 by

on behalf of the journal '' Topology and its Applications'' and consists of $15,000 USD that must be used by the awardee in the following way: $5,000 USD for three major conferences in topology, $5,000 USD for visiting a research center, and $5,000 USD, which can be used freely and is regarded as a cash prize. The prize was named after Mary Ellen Rudin, one of the most prominent

topologist In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing ho ...

s in the 20th century. Mary Ellen gave her permission to use her name for the award but unfortunately passed away before the first prize was awarded.

List of awardees

Recognition

She is included in a deck of playing cards featuring notable women mathematicians published by the Association of Women in Mathematics.

References

External links

*
"Mary Ellen Rudin", Biographies of Women Mathematicians

Agnes Scott College Agnes Scott College is a private women's liberal arts college in Decatur, Georgia. The college enrolls approximately 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The college is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church and is considered one of the ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rudin, Mary Ellen 1924 births 2013 deaths University of Texas at Austin College of Natural Sciences alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Mathematical Society American women mathematicians Topologists 20th-century American women scientists Mathematicians from Texas People from Hillsboro, Texas People from Real County, Texas People from Madison, Wisconsin 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians Mathematics awards Academic awards 21st-century American women

Early life and education

Career

Later life

See also

Publications

Mary Ellen Rudin Young Researcher Award

List of awardees

Recognition

References

External links

Further reading

External links