Ellen Gethner | |
---|---|
Born | 1960 (age 63–64) United States |
Occupation(s) | Mathematician and Computer Scientist |
Known for | Research in graph theory, winning the Mathematical Association of America's Chauvenet Prize in 2002 |
Ellen Gethner is a US mathematician and computer scientist specializing in graph theory who won the Mathematical Association of America's Chauvenet Prize [1] in 2002 with co-authors Stan Wagon and Brian Wick for their paper A stroll through the Gaussian Primes. [2]
Gethner has two doctorates. She completed her first, a PhD in mathematics from Ohio State University, in 1992; her dissertation, Rational Period Functions For The Modular Group And Related Discrete Groups, was supervised by L. Alayne Parson. She completed a second PhD in computer science from the University of British Columbia in 2002, with a dissertation Computational Aspects of Escher Tilings supervised by Nick Pippenger and David G. Kirkpatrick. [3] Gethner is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of Colorado Denver. [4]
Gethner became interested in connections between geometry and art after a high school lesson using a kaleidoscope to turn a drawing into an Escher-like tessellation of the plane. This later inspired some of her research on wallpaper patterns and on converting music into visual patterns. [5]