Ellen Gethner is a US mathematician and computer scientist specializing in

graph theory In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of ''graph (discrete mathematics), graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of ''Vertex (graph ...

who won the

Mathematical Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary edu ...

Chauvenet Prize The Chauvenet Prize is an annual award given by the Mathematical Association of America in recognition of an outstanding expository article on a mathematical topic. It consists of a prize of $1,000 and a certificate. The Chauvenet Prize was the ...

in 2002 with co-authors

Stan Wagon Stanley Wagon is a Canadian-American mathematician, a professor emeritus of mathematics at Macalester College in Minnesota. He is the author of multiple books on number theory, geometry, and computational mathematics, and is also known for his sn ...

and Brian Wick for their paper ''A stroll through the Gaussian Primes''.

Career

Gethner has two doctorates. She completed her first, a PhD in mathematics from

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

, in 1992; her dissertation, ''Rational Period Functions For The Modular Group And Related Discrete Groups'', was supervised by L. Alayne Parson. She completed a second PhD in computer science from the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

in 2002, with a dissertation ''Computational Aspects of Escher Tilings'' supervised by

Nick Pippenger Nicholas John Pippenger is a researcher in computer science. He has produced a number of fundamental results many of which are being widely used in the field of theoretical computer science, database processing and compiler optimization. He has ...

and David G. Kirkpatrick. Gethner is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at

University of Colorado Denver The University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver) is a Public university, public research university located in downtown Denver, Colorado. It is part of the University of Colorado system. Established in 1912 as an extension of the University of C ...

Research

Gethner became interested in connections between geometry and art after a high school lesson using a kaleidoscope to turn a drawing into an Escher-like

tessellation A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called ''tiles'', with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety ...

of the plane. This later inspired some of her research on wallpaper patterns and on converting music into visual patterns.

References

External links

* Living people Place of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American mathematicians American computer scientists American women computer scientists Graph theorists Ohio State University Graduate School alumni University of British Columbia alumni University of Colorado Denver faculty 1960 births 21st-century American women mathematicians {{US-compu-bio-stub