Marjorie Blake (Marj) Batchelor-Winter is an American mathematician known for her work on

coalgebra In mathematics, coalgebras or cogebras are structures that are dual (in the category-theoretic sense of reversing arrows) to unital associative algebras. The axioms of unital associative algebras can be formulated in terms of commutative diagram ...

s and

supermanifold In physics and mathematics, supermanifolds are generalizations of the manifold concept based on ideas coming from supersymmetry. Several definitions are in use, some of which are described below. Informal definition An informal definition is com ...

s. She is an

emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who 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". In some c ...

staff member in the department of pure mathematics and mathematical statistics at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

in England, where she was formerly the graduate education officer and director of the Cambridge Mathematics Placements summer programme.

Education

Batchelor is the daughter of William Henry Batchelor, a medical researcher and administrator at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

. She graduated from

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts, United States. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smit ...

in 1973, and in 2008 returned to Smith with her husband, Alan Winter, to help revive the tradition of

change ringing Change ringing is the art of ringing a set of tuning (music), tuned bell (instrument), bells in a tightly controlled manner to produce precise variations in their successive striking sequences, known as "changes". This can be by method ringing in ...

at Smith. She became a student of

Bertram Kostant Bertram Kostant (May 24, 1928 – February 2, 2017) was an American mathematician who worked in representation theory, differential geometry, and mathematical physics. Early life and education Kostant grew up in New York City, where he gradua ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

, completing her Ph.D. there in 1978 with a dissertation on ''The Structure of Supermanifolds''.

Research

In the theory of

s, Batchelor's theorem states that every supermanifold can be realized as a sheaf of differential forms over the exterior bundle of a vector bundle. Batchelor published its proof in her 1979 paper, "The structure of supermanifolds".

Activism

At Cambridge, Batchelor became known for her efforts to encourage women in mathematics, and to build a more collegial and interactive atmosphere among the students studying for the

Mathematical Tripos The Mathematical Tripos is the mathematics course that is taught in the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Origin In its classical nineteenth-century form, the tripos was a di ...

References

External links

Home pageMarj Batchelor
Women in Maths, 18 January 2017 {{DEFAULTSORT:Batchelor, Marjorie Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American mathematicians British mathematicians Smith College alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Academics of the University of Cambridge