Lenore Blum

Lenore Carol Blum (born December 18, 1942 in New York City ) is an American mathematical logician and computer scientist who deals with complexity theory.

Lenore Blum, Berkeley 1984

Blum went to school in New York City and Caracas , Venezuela , graduated from high school at the age of 16 and then studied architecture and then mathematics at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (where she studied computer science with Alan Perlis ) and from 1961 at Simmons College (a college for women) in Boston, while at the same time doing her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (which she had previously rejected several times) with Gerald E. Sacks ( Generalized algebraic theories - a model theoretic approach , 1968). As a post-doc she was at the University of California, Berkeley and from 1973 lecturer at Mills College (originally a women's college in Benicia , California), initially only for algebra lessons. Soon afterwards she founded her own department for mathematics and computer science, which she headed for thirteen years. In 1979 she was the first Letts Villard Professor in Mills. From the 1980s she devoted herself entirely to research and was in the theory group at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley from 1988 and Adjunct Professor for Computer Science in Berkeley from 1989. From 1996 to 1998 she was visiting professor at the City University of Hong Kong. In 1999 she became Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University . There she was co-director of Aladdin ( Center for Algorithm Adaptation Dissemination and Integration ).

Manuel Blum (left), Lenore Blum, Avrim Blum, 1973

With Mike Shub and Stephen Smale , she expanded the classical theory of computability (complexity theory), which is based on modeling with Turing machines , from "discrete" situations to "continuous" ones, such as over real numbers. With Smale she proved within the framework of this theory in 1990 that the amount of Mandelbrot is undecidable, which was previously posed as a problem by Roger Penrose .

She was active in promoting women's studies in mathematics and was one of the first members of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM), of which she was president from 1975 to 1978. She co-founded the Math / Science Network to promote math teaching for girls in schools.

From 1990 to 1992 she was Vice President of the American Mathematical Society , of which she is a Fellow, and from 1992 to 1997 Deputy Director of the MSRI .

In 1990 she was invited speaker at the ICM in Kyōto ( A theory of computation and complexity over the reals ). In 2004 she received the Presidential Award for Excellency in Science. In 2002 she was a Noether Lecturer ( Computing Over the Reals: Where Turing Meets Newton ). In 1999 she became an honorary doctorate from Mills College.

Her husband Manuel Blum and their son Avrim Blum were also computer science professors at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2018, the Blums resigned from all positions in protest over alleged sexism at Carnegie Mellon.

Fonts

Lectures on a theory of computation and complexity over the reals (or an arbitrary ring) , in: Lectures in the Sciences of Complexity, Addison-Wesley, 1990, pp. 1-47
with Filipe Cucker, Mike Shub , Stephen Smale : Complexity and real computation , Springer 1997
Computing over the reals - where Turing meets Newton , Notices of the AMS, October 2004, online here

Web links

Individual evidence

^ Lenore Blum shocked the community with her sudden resignation from CMU. Here she tells us why . September 6, 2018.

personal data
SURNAME	Blum, Lenore
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Blum, Lenore Carol
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American logician and computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH	December 18, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH	New York City

[1] Lenore Blum shocked the community with her sudden resignation from CMU. Here she tells us why . September 6, 2018.