Jean Taylor

Jean Taylor, 2019

Jean Ellen Taylor (born September 17, 1944 in San Mateo , California ) is an American mathematician who deals with the calculus of variations , differential geometry and minimal surfaces .

Live and act

Taylor initially studied chemistry at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts ( Bachelor's degree in 1966) and at the University of California, Berkeley ( Master's degree in 1968), where she switched to mathematics (after listening to Shiing-Shen Chern lectures). She followed (avoiding the political turmoil in Berkeley in the 1968 times) her then husband, the mathematician John Guckenheimer , to the University of Warwick in England, where she received her master's degree in mathematics in 1970. In the fall of 1970 she went to Princeton University , where she did her doctorate in 1973 with Frederick Almgren ( Regularity of the singular set of 2-dimensional area minimizing flat chains modulo 3 in ${\ displaystyle R ^ {3}}$ , Inventiones Mathematicae, Vol. 22, 1973, pp. 119–159) . Then she was an instructor at MIT . From 1973 she was first assistant professor and from 1982 professor at Rutgers University . Since 2002 she has been Professor Emeritus there. In the same year she went to the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University . In 1976 she received a research grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ( Sloan Research Fellowship ).

Taylor is known for her work in the 1970s on minimal problems of the soap bubble type (in a mathematical formulation by Almgren that is closer to experimental soap bubbles than the plateau problem, up until then preferably studied by mathematicians ) and also investigated mathematical models of crystal growth, where she also seeks contacts to the experiment.

Taylor is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1999). From 1995 to 1997 she was Vice President of the American Mathematical Society . In 2003 she was a Noether Lecturer . In 2001 she received an honorary doctorate from Mount Holyoke College. From 1999 to 2001 she was President of the Association for Women in Mathematics . She is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

She had been married to mathematician Frederick Almgren since 1973, who died in 1997. She has a daughter with him. In her spare time, she is a rock climber and mountain hiker and is involved in the Consortium for the Consortium of the Black Rock Forest 50 miles north of New York City , which includes a number of schools and universities. She is married to William T. Golden.

Fonts

with Frederick Almgren: The geometry of Soap Films and Soap Bubbles , Scientific American, July 1976
The structure of singularities in area-related variational problems with constraints , Bulletin AMS, Vol. 81, 1975, p. 1093
Some mathematical challenges in material science , Bulletin AMS, Vol. 40, 2003, p. 69

literature

Donald J. Albers, Gerald L. Alexanderson Fascinating Mathematical People: Interviews and Memoirs , Princeton University Press 2011

Web links

References

↑ Taylor: The structure of singularities in soap bubble like and soap film like minimal surfaces , Annals of Mathematics, Vol. 103, 1976, pp. 489-539

personal data
SURNAME	Taylor, Jean
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Taylor, Jean Ellen (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH	September 17, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH	San Mateo , California

[1] Taylor: The structure of singularities in soap bubble like and soap film like minimal surfaces , Annals of Mathematics, Vol. 103, 1976, pp. 489-539