Janet Heine Barnett is a professor of mathematics at

Colorado State University–Pueblo Colorado State University Pueblo (CSU Pueblo) is a public university in Pueblo, Colorado. It is a member of the Colorado State University System (CSU System) and a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). History 1933 to 1959 The idea for startin ...

, interested in

set theory Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory, as a branch of mathematics, is mostly conce ...

mathematical logic Mathematical logic is the study of formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory. Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of formal ...

, the

history of mathematics The history of mathematics deals with the origin of discoveries in mathematics and the mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and the worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples of new mathematical developments ...

, women in mathematics, and

mathematics education In contemporary education, mathematics education, known in Europe as the didactics or pedagogy of mathematics – is the practice of teaching, learning and carrying out scholarly research into the transfer of mathematical knowledge. Although re ...

Education and career

Barnett is originally from

Pueblo, Colorado Pueblo () is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Pueblo County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 111,876 at the 2020 United States Census, making Pueblo the ninth most populo ...

. She did her undergraduate studies at Colorado State University, entering as an engineering student but switching to a double major in mathematics and humanities. She graduated in 1981, served in the

Peace Corps The Peace Corps is an independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to provide international development assistance. It was established in March 1961 by an executive order of President John F ...

teaching mathematics in

Bambari Bambari is a town in the Central African Republic, lying on the Ouaka River. It has a population of 41,356 (2003 census) and is the capital of Ouaka prefecture. Bambari is an important market town and is home to Bambari Airport, and the R ...

in the

Central African Republic The Central African Republic (CAR; ; , RCA; , or , ) is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan to the northeast, South Sudan to the southeast, the DR Congo to the south, the Republic of th ...

from 1982 to 1984, and in doing so discovered her love for teaching mathematics. She completed her doctorate in 1990, at the

University of Colorado Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sy ...

. Her dissertation, ''Random Reals, Cohen Reals and Variants of Martin's Axioms'', concerned set theory; it was supervised by

Richard Laver Richard Joseph Laver (October 20, 1942 – September 19, 2012) was an American mathematician, working in set theory. Biography Laver received his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley in 1969, under the supervision of Ralph McKenzie, wit ...

. In the same year she joined the CSU Pueblo faculty.

Recognition

In 2015, Barnett won the Burton W. Jones Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of the Mathematical Association of America. In 2017, she won the Deborah and Franklin Haimo Awards for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics, for excellence in teaching reaching beyond her own campus. The award recognized in particular her work in integrating the history of mathematics, and its original source documents, into the teaching of mathematics, and her mentorship of mathematics schoolteachers.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barnett, Janet Heine Year of birth missing (living people) Living people People from Pueblo, Colorado American women mathematicians 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Colorado State University alumni University of Colorado Boulder alumni Colorado State University Pueblo faculty 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians 20th-century American women 21st-century American women