Person: Michler, Ruth
Ruth Michler was an American mathematician who became an expert in commutative algebra and algebraic geometry. She organised several special sessions at meetings of the American Mathematical Society. She was killed in a road accident in Boston at the age of 33.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Gerhard Michler was born in Braunschweig, Germany, on 5 May 1938.
- Ruth then entered a Gymnasium in Essen and completed her studies there, graduating in 1985.
- During her years at school, Ruth greatly enjoyed learning foreign languages and had a particular passion for mathematics, sciences, fine arts and music.
- It was at the University of Oxford in England that Ruth Michler undertook her undergraduate studies.
- At the time Michler studied at Oxford, he was a fellow and mathematics tutor at Balliol College.
- In 1987 Michler won a won a Jenkyns essay prize for her paper "Black Holes," under the direction of Roger Penrose, the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.
- After the award of a B.A. from the University of Oxford in 1988, Michler went to the United States to undertake research for her doctorate.
- Michler was awarded a Ph.D. in 1993 for her 80-page thesis Hodge-components of Cyclic Homology of Singular Affine Hypersurfaces.
- Michler received an invitation from Leslie G Roberts to spend the academic year 1993-94 at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada, as a postdoctoral fellow.
- Michler spent a year at Queen's University and wrote papers such as Torsion of differentials of hypersurfaces with isolated singularities (1995) and Torsion of differentials of affine quasi-homogeneous hypersurfaces (1996).
- After spending the year in Canada, Michler decided that she would try to spend her career in the United States rather than return to Germany, the country in which she was brought up.
- Michler, with an outstanding record, was offered a tenure-track position at the University of North Texas in Denton in 1994.
- Ruth had driven from Texas to Toronto in a day, hardly stopping for food or rest.
- North Texas was a big change for Ruth after graduate school in Berkeley.
- This quote illustrates the energy that Michler had and this led her to attend conferences in many different countries around the world giving talks at these meetings.
- Michler gave the lecture Torsion of differentials of hypersurfaces with isolated singularities in the Special Session on Commutative Noetherian Rings and Modules at the Joint Mathematics Meeting of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America conference in San Francisco, California on 4-7 January 1995.
- Ruth brought an intensity to everything she did, and her mathematical work reflected this intensity.
- In her research, Ruth used techniques from several different areas of mathematics and combined very abstract theory with concrete calculations of examples, using computer programs such as Macaulay and Maple.
- For all the three Special Sessions that Michler co-organised at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, her fellow organiser was Caroline Melles.
- Ruth was fearless and full of ideas.
- Michler was awarded a National Science Foundation Professional Opportunities for Women in Research and Education Fellowship to visit the Mathematics Department of Northeastern University for the academic year 2000-2001 to work with Tony Iarrobino and Marc Levine.
- On 1 November 2000, Ruth died tragically after an accident with a construction vehicle, on a corner near the Department.
- Ruth enjoyed music, including the symphony, and opera: she was a regular visitor to the Dallas Opera.
- Ruth Michler the runner has been mentioned several times in our biography above.
- At the time of her death Michler was organising two conferences: "Résolution des singularités et géométrie non commutative" Ⓣ(Singularity resolution and non-commutative geometry) to be held at the Centre International de Rencontres Mathématiques at Luminy, France, from 20-22 July 2001; and Algebraic Geometry to be held in Annapolis, Maryland, USA, 25-28 October 2001.
- Following Michler's death, both conferences were held in her memory and a book was produced of the proceeding of both conferences entitled 'Topics in algebraic and noncommutative geometry' published by the American Mathematical Society in 2003.
- Michler Memorial Prize of the Association for Women in Mathematics at Cornell.
Born 8 March 1967, Ithaca, New York, USA. Died 1 November 2000, Boston, USA.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Usa, Women
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
-
- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
