Jean Ellen Taylor (born 1944) is an American mathematician who is a

professor emerita ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

and visiting faculty at the

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU). Founded in 1935, it is named after Richard Courant, one of the founders of the Courant Institute ...

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

Biography

Taylor was born in Northern California. She did her undergraduate studies at

Mount Holyoke College Mount Holyoke College is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in South Hadley, Massachusetts, United States. It is the oldest member of the h ...

, graduating summa cum laude with an A.B. in 1966. She began her graduate studies in chemistry at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, but after receiving an M.Sc. she switched to mathematics under the mentorship of

Shiing-Shen Chern Shiing-Shen Chern (; , ; October 26, 1911 – December 3, 2004) was a Chinese American mathematician and poet. He made fundamental contributions to differential geometry and topology. He has been called the "father of modern differential geome ...

and then transferred to the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...

and received a second M.Sc. in mathematics there. She completed a doctorate in 1973 from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

under the supervision of Frederick J. Almgren, Jr. Taylor joined the Rutgers faculty in 1973, and retired in 2002. She was president of the

Association for Women in Mathematics The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a professional society whose mission is to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment o ...

from 1999 to 2001. She has been married three times, to mathematicians John Guckenheimer and Frederick Almgren, and to financier and science advocate William T. Golden.

Research

Taylor is known for her work on the mathematics of

soap bubble A soap bubble (commonly referred to as simply a bubble) is an extremely thin soap film, film of soap or detergent and water enclosing air that forms a hollow sphere with an iridescent surface. Soap bubbles usually last for only a few seconds b ...

s and of the growth of

crystal A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituents (such as atoms, molecules, or ions) are arranged in a highly ordered microscopic structure, forming a crystal lattice that extends in all directions. In addition, macros ...

s. In 1973 she published her dissertation on "Regularity of the Singular Set of Two-Dimensional Area-Minimizing Flat Chains Modulo 3 in R3" which solved a long-standing problem about length and smoothness of soap-film triple function curves. In 1976 she, along with Almgren, published the first proof of

Plateau's laws Plateau's laws describe the structure of soap films. These laws were formulated in the 19th century by the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau from his experimental observations. Many patterns in nature are based on foams obeying these laws. Laws ...

, a description of the shapes formed by soap bubble clusters that had been formulated without proof in the 19th century by

Joseph Plateau Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (; 14 October 1801 – 15 September 1883) was a Belgian physicist and mathematician. He was one of the first people to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this, he used counterrotating disks with r ...

. Encyclopedia Britannica called the mathematical derivation "one of the major triumphs of global analysis".

Awards and honors

Taylor is a fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

, the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

, the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

, and the

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific soci ...

. In 2001, she received an honorary doctorate from Mount Holyoke College. In 2017, she was selected as a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics in the inaugural class.

Selected publications

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References

External links

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Home page at Rutgers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Jean E. Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 1944 births Mount Holyoke College alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Alumni of the University of Warwick Princeton University alumni Rutgers University faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences faculty Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics 21st-century American mathematicians 20th-century American women mathematicians 21st-century American women mathematicians