Cathleen Morawetz - relentless problem solver

"Her courage and determination in tackling a hard problem relentlessly are characteristic of the finest problem solvers," Peter Sarnak, Professor, School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study, describing mathematician Cathleen Morawezt.

So often I write about women who've had to overcome multiple setbacks and fight for their place in history against incredible odds. In the case of Cathleen Morawetz (May 5, 1923 – August 8, 2017), it almost seems as though she was destined to take up a career in mathematics. Her parents met at Trinity College Dublin where her mother had recently switched majors from mathematics to history, and where her father John L. Synge began his life-long career in mathematical physics. As you would expect, both supported her interests in math and science from an early age. When she was still a very young child, her answer to the perennial question adults ask children "What would you like to be when you grow up?" was "I want to be a mathematician!" She said later that she didn't really know what a mathematician did, but she knew she wanted to be one just like her dad.

Growing up in a supportive home isn't enough to ensure a successful career, though. She needed the support of a wide variety of people along the way. When she was considering becoming a teacher in India after earning her bachelor's at the University of Toronto in 1945, a chance encounter with family friend and mathematician Cecilia Krieger steered back toward mathematics. Krieger encouraged her to apply for a scholarship to attend MIT to continue her studies.

But even having a master's degree isn't enough to ensure a successful career. When she was looking for a job in the post-war technology boom, she was told that companies didn't hire women. Luckily, her blessed father pulled a few strings and got her a job editing a mathematics manuscript on supersonic flow and shock waves by Richard Courant and Kurt Otto Friedrichs. This turned out to be more than simply an temporary gig to help pay the bills. It formed the foundation of her future research as well as introducing her to Richard Courant, the influential German American mathematician who founded the Courant Institute for graduate studies in applied mathematics at New York University.

Years later she would be the first to point out how fortunate she was to find that initial position at Courant, where she spent the the next six decades working through some rather hairy mathematical problems. During her first years, it was a fortuitous position which allowed her to work part-time and paid her enough to afford childcare and housekeeping help while also giving her the freedom to focus solely on her research when she was in the office. Like many women then, and now, she had to deal with inappropriate questions from colleagues about her ability to juggle motherhood and a career, often not even bothering to disguise the judgment that she was harming her children by being away from them. When asked if she found herself distracted at work worrying about her children, she quipped, "No, I’m much more likely to worry about a theorem when I’m with my children."

The job of a theoretical mathematician wasn't one that attracted many women, perhaps due to the expectation that mathematicians would stay in the office late into the night working through theorems -- a prospect that likely wasn't appealing to most people who had interests outside of mathematics. But because of the job flexibility at Courant, she was able to find a balance that worked for her. It was during this period that she came up with her first major breakthrough. Her research on the mathematics involved in transonic flow -- where both subsonic and supersonic sound waves exist simultaneously -- proved that engineers attempting to design airplane wings that eliminated shock waves altogether were impractical because changes in alignment and wind gusts could not be controlled, and instead the focus should be on designs that minimize the impact of shock waves.

"One of my daughters said to me that the problem of being a mathematician is that you're on stage all the time in the sense that you're constantly trying to achieve something in the form of proving a theorem. That's unending. You compete against yourself as well as others and it provides a special fascination in life."

As her children (four in all) grew up, she was able to take on more duties at Courant, including teaching. But she continued her research developing detailed mathematical models, many of which are still used in aerodynamics, acoustics, and optics. It was the research -- the unending work on trying to prove a theorem -- that fascinated her from the beginning. She realized early on in her career that her passion was for theoretical mathematics, and not in the actual work of applying it engineering or accounting. Her talent was in thinking about abstract concepts and then finding ways to express that using mathematics.

Over the course of her career she was awarded numerous award and honors. She was often the first woman to have earned that recognition, but she never stopped thinking about what a privilege it was and how she could use her position to encourage other women to pursue a career in mathematics. In 1998, at the age of 75, she received the National Medal of Science from President Bill Clinton, saying "It's a tremendous moment for me. And I hope it will draw attention to the idea that women can do math and will have some influence on women all the way from grade school to graduate school and beyond."

Cathleen Morawetz's story isn't one of overcoming hardships, but it is inspirational nonetheless because it shows us what women can achieve when given the chance, and echoes many of the modern day calls for a better work-life balance for all researchers, regardless of gender or parenting-status. She was given the early support she needed to take a chance on a difficult career, and then she found a place that enabled her to do her best work while also helping her to maintaining a life outside of research.

You can watch a series of fascinating interviews with her from 2010 and 2012 on the Simons Foundation.

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