Rhonda Jo Hughes (born Rhonda Weisberg September 28, 1947). is an American mathematician, the Helen Herrmann Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United St ...

.Faculty profile
Bryn Mawr College, retrieved 2017-08-15

Education

Hughes grew up on the South Side of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. She attended Gage Park High School, where she was a cheerleader and valedictorian of her class. She studied engineering at the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universit ...

for one and a half years, then left school and worked for six months before resuming her education at the

University of Illinois at Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a Public university, public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side, Chicago, Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus esta ...

on an Illinois State Scholarship studying mathematics. There, she came under the mentorship of Yoram Sagher, who encouraged her to pursue graduate studies in mathematics. She earned a Ph.D. from the same university in 1975, under the supervision of Shmuel Kantorovitz, with a dissertation entitled ''Semi-Groups of Unbounded Linear Operators in Banach Space''.

Career

She began her teaching career at

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

then spent a year as a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

at the

Bunting Institute The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University—also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute—is a part of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, a ...

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

. She moved to

in 1980, where she served as department chair for six years. She is the Helen Herrmann professor emeritus of mathematics at Bryn Mawr, and retired in 2011.. She was president 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 ...

(AWM) 1987–1988. She has served on the Commission on Physical Science, Mathematics, and Applications of the

United States National Research Council The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (also known as NASEM or the National Academies) are the collective scientific national academy of the United States. The name is used interchangeably in two senses: (1) as an umbrell ...

. She and Sylvia Bozeman organized the Spelman-Bryn Mawr Summer Mathematics Program for female undergraduate students from 1992 to 1994. In 1998, they founded the EDGE Program (Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education), a transition program for women entering graduate programs in the mathematical sciences. The program is now in its twentieth year. Her most recent research involves

ill-posed problems The mathematical term well-posed problem stems from a definition given by 20th-century French mathematician Jacques Hadamard. He believed that mathematical models of physical phenomena should have the properties that: # a solution exists, # the s ...

Honors

Hughes received a Distinguished Teaching Award from 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 ...

in 1997. In 2004 she received the AAAS Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement, in 2010 the Gweneth Humphreys Award for Mentorship of Undergraduate Women in Mathematics of the

, and in 2013 she received the Elizabeth Bingham Award of the Philadelphia Chapter of the

Association for Women in Science The Association for Women in Science (AWIS) was founded in 1971 at the annual Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) meeting. The organization aims to combat job discrimination, lower pay, and professional isolation. The ...

. In 2017, she was selected as a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics in the inaugural class.

References

External links

A Tribute to the Work of Professor Emeritus Rhonda Hughes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hughes, Rhonda 1947 births Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians University of Illinois Chicago alumni Tufts University faculty Bryn Mawr College faculty Fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians 20th-century American women 21st-century American women