Rhonda Lee Hatcher is an American mathematician whose research topics include

analytic number theory In mathematics, analytic number theory is a branch of number theory that uses methods from mathematical analysis to solve problems about the integers. It is often said to have begun with Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet's 1837 introduction of Dir ...

and

L-function In mathematics, an ''L''-function is a meromorphic function on the complex plane, associated to one out of several categories of mathematical objects. An ''L''-series is a Dirichlet series, usually convergent on a half-plane, that may gi ...

s as well as topics in

recreational mathematics Recreational mathematics is mathematics carried out for recreation (entertainment) rather than as a strictly research-and-application-based professional activity or as a part of a student's formal education. Although it is not necessarily limited ...

. She is an emeritus associate professor of mathematics at

Texas Christian University Texas Christian University (TCU) is a private university, private research university in Fort Worth, Texas, United States. It was established in 1873 by brothers Addison Clark, Addison and Randolph Clark as the AddRan Male & Female College. It i ...

Education and career

Hatcher graduated

summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...

from the

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

in 1980. She earned her Ph.D. in 1988 from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. Her dissertation, ''Heights and L-Series'', was supervised by

Benedict Gross Benedict Hyman Gross (born June 22, 1950) is an American mathematician who is a professor at the University of California, San Diego, the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at Harvard University, and former Dean of Harvard C ...

. After completing her doctorate, she taught at

St. Olaf College St. Olaf College is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, United States. It was founded in 1874 by a group of Norwegian-American pastors and farmers led by Pastor Bernt Julius Muus. The college is named after the King and th ...

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

for three years before moving to Texas Christian. At Texas Christian, Hatcher served as the Faculty Athletics Representative from 1999 until 2023. She has also represented the

Big 12 Conference The Big 12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference in the United States. It consists of 16 full-member universities (3 private universities and 13 public universities) in the states of Arizona, Colorado, Florida ...

in the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

Committee on Academics. Within the committee, she took a minority position against a proposed rule change to allow students with high

grade point average Grading in education is the application of standardized Measurement, measurements to evaluate different levels of student achievement in a course. Grades can be expressed as letters (usually A to F), as a range (for example, 1 to 6), percentage ...

s to transfer to other schools and maintain their athletic eligibility, arguing that the rule would disproportionately penalize African-American students.

Book

With George T. Gilbert, she is the author of ''Mathematics Beyond the Numbers'' (Wiley, 2000; 2nd ed., Kendall Hunt, 2012). This is a mathematics textbook designed for use in

liberal arts education Liberal arts education () is a traditional academic course in Western higher education. ''Liberal arts'' takes the term '' art'' in the sense of a learned skill rather than specifically the fine arts. ''Liberal arts education'' can refer to s ...

. It covers topics mathematics through their applications, including

voting system An electoral or voting system is a set of rules used to determine the results of an election. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections may take place in business, nonprofit organizations and inf ...

apportionment The legal term apportionment (; Mediaeval Latin: , derived from , share), also called delimitation, is in general the distribution or allotment of proper shares, though may have different meanings in different contexts. Apportionment can refer ...

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinians, Augustinian ...

opinion poll An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll, is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of qu ...

scheduling A schedule (, ) or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such things ...

, and

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), ...

. Its mathematical topics include

probability Probability is a branch of mathematics and statistics concerning events and numerical descriptions of how likely they are to occur. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1; the larger the probability, the more likely an e ...

and

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

graph theory In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of ''graph (discrete mathematics), graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of ''Vertex (graph ...

and

combinatorial geometry Discrete geometry and combinatorial geometry are branches of geometry that study combinatorial properties and constructive methods of discrete geometric objects. Most questions in discrete geometry involve finite or discrete sets of basic geom ...

, and

number theory Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example ...

Recognition

In 1998, Hatcher won the Deborah and Franklin Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics. The award announcement cited her excellent mathematics teaching at Texas Christian, her work helping high school teachers prepare to teach

AP Calculus Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus (also known as AP Calc, Calc AB / BC, AB / BC Calc or simply AB / BC) is a set of two distinct Advanced Placement calculus courses and exams offered by the American nonprofit organization College Board. AP Calculu ...

, and her summer programs which attracted undergraduates from other parts of the country to work with her on number theory,

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

. Some of the research from this program ended up being published in professional journals.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hatcher, Rhonda Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American number theorists University of Colorado Boulder alumni Harvard University alumni St. Olaf College faculty Texas Christian University faculty 20th-century American women mathematicians 21st-century American women mathematicians