Sylvia de Neymet Urbina (aka Silvia de Neymet de Christ, 1939 – 13 January 2003) was a Mexican mathematician, the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics in Mexico, and the first female professor in the faculty of sciences of the

National Autonomous University of Mexico The National Autonomous University of Mexico (, UNAM) is a public university, public research university in Mexico. It has several campuses in Mexico City, and many others in various locations across Mexico, as well as a presence in nine countri ...

(UNAM).

Early life and education

De Neymet was born in

Mexico City Mexico City is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Mexico, largest city of Mexico, as well as the List of North American cities by population, most populous city in North America. It is one of the most important cultural and finan ...

in 1939. Her mother had been orphaned in the

Mexican Revolution The Mexican Revolution () was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from 20 November 1910 to 1 December 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It saw the destruction of the Federal Army, its ...

of 1910, studied art at La Esmeralda, and became a teacher; she encouraged De Neymet in her studies. Her father's mother was also a teacher, and her father was a civil engineer. In 1955 she began studying at the Universidad Femenina de México, a women's school founded by , and in her fourth year there she was hired as a mathematics teacher herself, despite the fact that many of her students would be older than her. After two years of mathematical study in Paris, at the

Institut Henri Poincaré The Henri Poincaré Institute (or IHP for ''Institut Henri Poincaré'') is a mathematics research institute part of Sorbonne University, in association with the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). It is located in the 5th arrondi ...

, from 1959 to 1961, de Neymet returned to Mexico and was given a degree in mathematics in 1961, with a thesis on differential equations supervised by

Solomon Lefschetz Solomon Lefschetz (; 3 September 1884 – 5 October 1972) was a Russian-born American mathematician who did fundamental work on algebraic topology, its applications to algebraic geometry, and the theory of non-linear ordinary differential equatio ...

, who by this time was regularly wintering at UNAM. At around the same time, CINVESTAV (the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute) was founded; de Neymet became one of the first students there, and the first doctoral student of

Samuel Gitler Hammer Samuel Carlos Gitler Hammer (July 14, 1933 – September 9, 2014)
CINVESTAV, retrieved 2012-05-19.

, one of the founders of CINVESTAV. She married Michael Christ, a French physician, in 1962, and while still finishing her doctorate became a teacher at the Escuela Superior de Física y Matemáticas of the

Instituto Politécnico Nacional The National Polytechnic Institute (), abbreviated IPN, is one of the largest public universities in Mexico with 171,581 students at the high school, undergraduate and postgraduate levels. It is the second-best university in Mexico in the techni ...

, founded four years earlier. She completed her doctorate under Gitler's supervision in 1966, becoming one of the first seven people to earn a mathematics doctorate in Mexico, and the first Mexican woman to do so.

Career and later life

After completing her doctorate, she joined the faculty of sciences of UNAM, one of only three full-time mathematicians there (with Víctor Neumann-Lara and Arturo Fregoso Urbina). After continuing her career at UNAM for many years, she died on 13 January 2003. Her book ''Introducción a los grupos topológicos de transformaciones'' 'Introduction to topological transformation groups''was published posthumously in 2005.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:De Neymet, Sylvia Mexican mathematicians Mexican women mathematicians Academic staff of the National Autonomous University of Mexico 1939 births 2003 deaths