Celebrating Women in Mathematics

Abstract

This paper was motivated by the worldwide May 12 initiative that aims to celebrate, encourage, and inspire women in mathematics. It presents in short how the May 12 initiative has arisen, what are some of the events in the first years, in particular the Generalized functions online workshop that started in 2021 in this context (and has continued as an annual event ever since), and a brief overview of some female mathematicians who have significant scientific contributions and who are the first women in some aspects: Maryam Mirzakhani (the first female mathematician who was awarded with the prestigious Fields medal; the May 12 initiative appeared in her honour), Hypatia (considered to be the earliest known female mathematician), Sofia Kovalevskaya (the first woman who has been awarded a doctorate in mathematics and considered to be the first woman who got a full professorship in mathematics in the modern academic sense), Emmy Noether (the first woman who gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians), Karen Uhlenbeck (the first woman awarded with the prestigious Abel Prize), and Ingrid Daubechies (the first woman who became a full professor in mathematics at Princeton University, the first woman elected for President of the International Mathematical Union, the first woman who received the National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics). The paper was an invited contribution for the Akademie Intakt of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. It appeared in Akademie Intakt 2021, English Edition, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, 2021, 10-13, and it is submitted to arXiv with a permission from the publisher.