Ele Willoughby, PhDAug 24
Happy birthday to #mathematician Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck (b. 1942), a founder of modern geometric #analysis & winner of 2019 Abel Prize for “her pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory, & integrable systems, & for the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry & mathematical physics.” The only woman winner, she donated half the money to orgs which promote engagement of women in math.⁠🧵1/
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#womenInSTEM #printmaking #sciart #mathart #mastoArt
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The #linocut shows a schematic of the whimsically named process “bubbling” surrounded by soap bubbles printed on paper which I marbled with #suminagashi inks. ⁠
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“The structure, elegance & beauty of mathematics struck me immediately, & I lost my heart to it,” she wrote. Math at UMich then NYU, for grad school. She married biophysicist Olke C. Uhlenbeck, son of physicist George. Her in-laws encouraged her pursuit of math. Olke moved to Harvard & she switched to Brandeis U (PhD in ‘68).⁠
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Aug 24 at 12:13pmWeb
Show threadEle Willoughby, PhDAug 24
She found temporary jobs at MIT & Berkeley but schools claimed anti-nepotism rules precluded them from hiring them both.⁠
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They both got faculty positions at U Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in ‘71. She could not stand life in Urbana, often dismissed as an “academic wife” rather than prof. She met post-doc Jonathan Sacks & they discovered a sort of singularity called a bubble where systems cannot converge on a harmonic map. The concept of a minimal surface minimizes 🧵3/
Show threadEle Willoughby, PhDAug 24
area (or surface tension/energy) the way a soap bubble does naturally. They showed there were a finite number of these singularities & that when you rescale a map near them you have “bubbling”.⁠
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She moved to U of Illinois in ‘76, separating from her husband, then U Chicago in ‘83 where peers took her seriously. She did ground-breaking work in gauge theory & exotic n-spaces that come up in the world of fundamental forces. 🧵4/5
Show threadEle Willoughby, PhDAug 24

With Taubes, she analyzed Yang-Mills equations in 4D; she proved her removable singularities theorem, showing that bubbling cannot occur around isolated points.⁠
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She remarried, then in ‘88 moved to U Austin. She founded Park City Mathematics institute & co-founded the IAS Women & Mathematics (WAM).

https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/1041721300

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