GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: DR. JULIA ROBINSON, 1919-1985. Best known for solving Hilbert's Tenth Problem, Julia Robinson had a long and impressive mathematical career. She was born in St. Louis and grew up in California. Her childhood was marred by the early loss of #GWOM 1/8

her mother and bouts of scarlet and rheumatic fever. She missed 2 years of school to illness. Once well enough, she was privately tutored and completed 5th through 8th grades in just one year. She scored 98 on an IQ test (slightly below average) in high school, which provided 2/8

an interesting contrast to her achievements--she got that IQ score while exhausting all the advanced mathematics her school offered, starting college at age 16. Once in college, she transferred to UC Berkeley upon finding the mathematical curriculum too easy and needing a 3/8

real challenge. She devoured their maths curriculum, earning a BA in 1940. Under the supervision of Alfred Tarski, she earned her PhD in 1948, proving in her dissertation that the theory of the rational numbers was an undecidable problem. She took up Hilbert's 10th Problem, 4/8

which was the search for a general algorithm that would determine if Diophantine equations have a solution with all integer values. Her work (with that of Davis, Matiyasevich, and Putnam) proved in 1970 that the answer is no. Throughout her career, she suffered from fragile 5/8

health as a result of her childhood illnesses, but she taught when her health permitted and enjoyed collaborating with other mathematicians. She was nominated to the National Academy of Sciences after solving Hilbert's 10th. Feminism was just beginning to create new chances 6/8

for women's contributions to be recognized. Tarski and Neyman, true allies, made the case for her to the NAS, which accepted her. In 1982, she became President of American Mathematical Society, won the Noether Award, gave a lecture series, and secured a MacArthur Prize. 7/8

Dr. Robinson died of leukemia in 1985. As modest in death as she had been in life, she requested memorials to the Alfred Tarski Fund, which she set up in honor of her mentor. Her legacy includes a documentary as well as a festival and numerous prizes and honors in her name. 8/8

Addendum: The festival has a Twitter presence! @JRMathFestivals