Moon Duchin
| Moon Duchin | |
|---|---|
| Residence | United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Tufts University |
| Alma mater | Harvard University, University of Chicago |
| Thesis | (2005) |
| Doctoral advisor | Alex Eskin |
| Notable awards | Fellow of the American Mathematical Society |
Moon Duchin is an American mathematician who works as an associate professor at Tufts University. Her mathematical research concerns geometric topology, geometric group theory, and Teichmüller theory.[1] For example, one of her results is that, for a broad class of locally flat surfaces, the geometry of the surface is entirely determined by the shortest length in each homotopy class of simple closed curves.[2] She is also interested in the history of science,[1] and is one of the core faculty members of Tufts's Science, Technology, and Society program.[3]
Early life
Duchin was given her first name, Moon, by parents "on the science-y fringes of the hippie classification". She grew up knowing from a young age that she wanted to become a mathematician.[4] As a student at Stamford High School in Connecticut, she completed the regular high school mathematics curriculum in her sophomore year, and continued to learn mathematics through independent study.[4] She was active in math and science camps and competitions and did a summer research project in the geometry of numbers with Noam Elkies.[4]
Education
Duchin went to Harvard University as an undergraduate, where she was active in queer organizing[5] and finished a double major in mathematics and women's studies in 1998.[4][6] As a graduate student in mathematics at the University of Chicago, she continued her feminist activism by teaching gender studies and pushing the university to add gender-neutral bathrooms,[4][7] and was mentioned mockingly by name on the Rush Limbaugh show.[4] She completed her doctorate in 2005, under the supervision of Alex Eskin.[8] She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis and the University of Michigan before joining the Tufts faculty in 2011.[4][6]
Awards and honors
In 2016 Duchin was named as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society "for contributions to geometric group theory and Teichmüller theory, and for service to the mathematical community".[9] She was also a Mathematical Association of America Distinguished Lecturer for that year, speaking on the mathematics of voting systems.[10]
References
- 1 2 Faculty profile, Tufts University, accessed December 11, 2016.
- ↑ Technically, "shortest length" here means an infimum of lengths, as there is not generally a single shortest representative curve for the class. See Bowman, Joshua Paul (2011). Review of Duchin, Moon; Leininger, Christopher J.; Rafi, Kasra (2010), "Length spectra and degeneration of flat metrics", Inventiones Mathematicae, 182 (2): 231–277, MR 2729268, doi:10.1007/s00222-010-0262-y.
- ↑ Science, Technology, and Society core faculty, Tufts University, accessed December 13, 2016.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Vanderkam, Laura (June 23, 2008), "Blazing a trail for women in math: Moon Duchin", Scientific American.
- ↑ Welker, Kristen (December 3, 1994), "Defamatory Poster Appalls Students", The Harvard Crimson
- 1 2 Curriculum vitae, accessed December 11, 2016.
- ↑ Closeted/OUT in the Quadrangles: A History of LGBTQ Life at the University of Chicago, University of Chicago Libraries, 2015, retrieved December 15, 2016.
- ↑ Moon Duchin at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ↑ 2017 Class of the Fellows of the AMS, accessed December 11, 2016.
- ↑ Math and the Vote: A Geometer Examines Elections, Mathematical Association of America, accessed December 11, 2016.
Additional reading
- Najmabadi, Shannon (February 22, 2017), "Meet the Math Professor Who’s Fighting Gerrymandering With Geometry", The Chronicle of Higher Education. The story concerns a new summer program founded by Duchin, to train mathematicians to become expert witnesses in legal cases involving gerrymandering.