Sylvia de Neymet

Sylvia de Neymet Urbina (aka Silvia de Neymet de Christ, 1939 – 13 January 2003) was a Mexican mathematician, the first woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics in Mexico, and the first female professor in the faculty of sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).[1][2]

Early life and education

De Neymet was born in Mexico City in 1939.[3] Her mother had been orphaned in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, studied art at La Esmeralda, and became a teacher; she encouraged De Neymet in her studies. Her father's mother was also a teacher, and her father was a civil engineer. In 1955 she began studying at the Universidad Femenina de México, a women's school founded by Adela Formoso de Obregón Santacilia [es], and in her fourth year there she was hired as a mathematics teacher herself, despite the fact that many of her students would be older than her.[2]

After two years of mathematical study in Paris, at the Institut Henri Poincaré, from 1959 to 1961,[2][3] de Neymet returned to Mexico and was given a degree in mathematics in 1961, with a thesis on differential equations supervised by Solomon Lefschetz, who by this time was regularly wintering at UNAM.[1][2][4] At around the same time, CINVESTAV (the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute) was founded; de Neymet became one of the first students there, and the first doctoral student of Samuel Gitler Hammer, one of the founders of CINVESTAV.[1][4] She married Michael Christ, a French physician, in 1962,[1][2] and while still finishing her doctorate became a teacher at the Escuela Superior de Física y Matemáticas of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, founded four years earlier.[2][4] She completed her doctorate under Gitler's supervision[5] in 1966, becoming one of the first seven people to earn a mathematics doctorate in Mexico, and the first Mexican woman to do so.[1][3]

Career and later life

After completing her doctorate, she joined the faculty of sciences of UNAM, one of only three full-time mathematicians there (with Víctor Neumann-Lara and Arturo Fregoso Urbina). After continuing her career at UNAM for many years,[4] she died on 13 January 2003.[2][3]

Her book Introducción a los grupos topológicos de transformaciones [Introduction to topological transformation groups] was published posthumously in 2005.[6]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Sylvia de Neymet (1939–2003)", Matemáticos en México (in Spanish), National Autonomous University of Mexico, retrieved 2021-09-27
  2. ^ a b c d e f g de la Paz Álvarez Scherer, Ma. (12 March 2019), "Tejiendo destellos: Imágenes de la vida de Sylvia de Neymet", Mujeres con Ciencia (in Spanish), retrieved 2021-09-27
  3. ^ a b c d Fallece Silvia de Neymet Urbina (in Spanish), Museo de la Mujer, retrieved 2021-09-27
  4. ^ a b c d Gómez Wulschner, Claudia (2010), "Ecos del pasado . . . luces del presente: Nuestras primeras matemáticas" (PDF), Miscelánea Matemática (in Spanish), 51: 41–57, archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-08-28; see in particular the biography of de Neymet on pp. 48–49
  5. ^ Sylvia de Neymet at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  6. ^ Review of Introducción a los grupos topológicos de transformaciones: Xabier Domínguez, Zbl 1231.54002
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