Women in Math Research

Peter Gerdes is a mathematician working in computability theory a.k.a. recursion theory, a branch of mathematical logic studying what computers (aka Turing machines) could in principle compute. Or more accurately when does being given access to the solution of one kind of problem (aka an oracle) allow the computer to solve some other problem. Currently focused on research about the alpha-REA degrees.

He is also the maintainer of the rec-thy latex package designed to give a common set of basic commands for the working mathematician in computability theory.

His History

Peter received his Ph.D. from the Group in Logic and Methodology of Science at the University of California at Berkeley under Prof. Leo Harrington. The Group in Logic is a cross-departmental program between the Math and Philosophy departments with some membership from the Computer Science department. The Group in Logic ensures that it’s graduates have a background in both the philosophical and mathematical aspects of logic but his advanced training and thesis were the same as if he had been in the mathematics department.

See here. for more details on his work.

His Women

He has said about articles on women in math:

That’s some very nice mathematics (both what’s covered here and what’s in the rest of the article). However, I worry that the primary effect of highlighting it in an issue devoted to women in mathematics is to create a perception that female mathematicians aren’t doing interesting enough work to hold their own so need their own special issue.

If you’re concerned about representation and encouraging fledgling female mathematicians isn’t the better move and simply increase the number of women covered in normal content?

Peter had a good point about giving proper credit to women. Here are two that he supports quite strongly:

His wife Sharon Berry is a tenured philosophy professor at Ashoka University who recently published a book.

The headline news is that Berry advocates a version of set theory that, rather than taking set theory to be the study of a single hierarchy of sets which stops at some particular point we should instead interpret set theorists as making claims about what hierarchies are possible. If you want to learn more about her work visit

here.

Karen Lange is an associate Professor of Department of Mathematics at Wellesley College. Her interests are in computability theory, an area of logic that explores the algorithmic content encoded in mathematical problems. She studies the computational complexity of problems of all sorts.

Open Problems

Do you agree with Peter’s point?