Colva Mary Roney-Dougal is a British mathematician specializing in

group theory In abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as group (mathematics), groups. The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as ring (mathematics), rings, field ( ...

and computational algebra. She is Professor of Pure Mathematics at the

University of St Andrews The University of St Andrews (, ; abbreviated as St And in post-nominals) is a public university in St Andrews, Scotland. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest of the four ancient universities of Scotland and, f ...

, and the Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Computational Algebra at St Andrews. She is also known for her popularization of mathematics on BBC radio shows, including appearances on '' In Our Time'' about the mathematics of

Emmy Noether Amalie Emmy Noether (23 March 1882 – 14 April 1935) was a German mathematician who made many important contributions to abstract algebra. She also proved Noether's theorem, Noether's first and Noether's second theorem, second theorems, which ...

and

Pierre-Simon Laplace Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace (; ; 23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French polymath, a scholar whose work has been instrumental in the fields of physics, astronomy, mathematics, engineering, statistics, and philosophy. He summariz ...

and on '' The Infinite Monkey Cage'' about the nature of infinity and numbers in the real world.

Education

Roney-Dougal completed her PhD at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

in 2001. Her dissertation, ''Permutation Groups with a Unique Non-diagonal Self-paired Orbital'', was supervised by

Peter Cameron Peter Cameron may refer to: * Peter Cameron (entomologist) (1847–1912), English entomologist who specialised in Hymenoptera * Peter Cameron (mathematician) (born 1947), Australian mathematician, joint winner of the 2003 Euler Medal * Peter Camero ...

Book

With John Bray and Derek Holt, Roney-Dougal is the co-author of the book ''The Maximal Subgroups of the Low-Dimensional Finite Classical Groups'' (London Mathematical Society and Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Recognition

In 2015 she was given the inaugural Cheryl E. Praeger Visiting Research Fellowship, funding her to visit the

University of Western Australia University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Crawley, Western Australia, Crawley, a suburb in the City of Perth local government area. UW ...

. Roney-Dougal was appointed

Officer of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(OBE) in the

2024 New Year Honours The 2024 New Year Honours are appointments by some of the 15 Commonwealth realms to Orders and decorations of the Commonwealth realms, various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by citizens of those countries. The New Year Hono ...

for services to education and mathematics.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roney-Dougal, Colva Year of birth missing (living people) Living people British mathematicians 21st-century British women mathematicians Group theorists Mathematics popularizers Alumni of the University of London Academics of the University of St Andrews Officers of the Order of the British Empire