Lenore Blum | Biography

Lenore Blum has played an integral role in increasing the participation of girls and women in mathematics. She was one of the founders of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM), acting as its president from 1975 to 1978. The AWM has membership totaling over 1,500 women and men. In addition to local, national and international meetings, the AWM sponsors the Emmy Noether Lecture series and has organized symposiums. It provides a list women who are available to speak at high schools and colleges and also contributes to the Dictionary of Women in the Mathematical Sciences.

Educational Pursuits

Blum was born in 1943 and as a child, she enjoyed math, art and music. Finishing high school at 16, Blum applied to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but was turned down, several times, in fact. After being turned down by MIT, Blum attended Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She began studying architecture, then changed her major to mathematics. For her third year, Blum enrolled at Simmons, a Boston area college for women. However, Blum found that she did not have to put forth much effort in the math classes. She then cross-registered at MIT, graduated from Simmons, and received her Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT in 1968. Blum continued her education as a postdoctorate student and lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley.

According to a biography written by Lisa Hayes, a student at Agnes Scott College, "Blum's research, from her early work in model theory, led to the formulation of her own theorems dealing with the patterns she found in trying to use new methods of logic to solve old problems in algebra." The work she did on this project became her doctoral thesis, which earned her a fellowship. Blum has also had the honor of reporting on work she did with Stephen Smale and Mike Shub in developing a theory of computation and complexity over real numbers.

Blum has written mathematical books with her husband, Manuel, a mathematician as well. They collaborated on a paper that proposed designing computers that had the ability to learn from example, much in the way young children learn. Blum has studied this project to discover why some computers learn the methods they do. Blum has been involved in other fields of research, in addition to working with her husband, which includes work in developing a new (homotopy) algorithm for linear programming.

When Blum was hired to teach algebra at Mills College, she was not happy with the program and sought a way to make the classes more interesting to the students and to the instructors. In 1973, she founded the Mills College Mathematics and Computer Science Department. Blum served as Head or Co-Head of the department for 13 years. While at Mills, Blum received the Letts-Villard Research professorship. Since 1988, she has been a research scientist in the Theory Group of the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI). In 1989, Blum was employed as an adjunct professor of Computer Science at Berkeley. During the 1980s, Blum became a research mathematician full-time, giving numerous talks at international conferences.

To further girls and women's participation in mathematics, Blum founded the Math/Science Network and its Expanding Your Horizons conferences. The Network began as an after-school problem-solving program. The aim of the program is to get high school girls interested in math and logic. The conference now travels nationwide. Blum served as its Co-Director from 1975-1981. Blum has written books and produced films, including "Count Me In", The Math/Science Connection," and "Four Women in Science," for the Network.

In addition to her work with the Math/Science Network, Blum is involved in the Mills College Summer Mathematics Institute for Undergraduate Women (SMI). The SMI is a six-week intensive mathematics program. Twenty-four undergraduate women are selected from across the nation to participate. According to the Mills College SMI page on the World Wide Web, the program aims "to increase the number of bright undergraduate women mathematics majors that continue on into graduate programs in the mathematical sciences and obtain advanced degrees."

Energetic Society Member

Blum is an active member of several mathematical societies. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Mathematical Society (AMS), where she served as Vice President from 1990 to 1992. Blum represented the AMS at the Pan African Congress of Mathematics held in Nairobi, Kenya, in the summer of 1991. At that time she became dedicated to creating an electronic communication link between American and African mathematics communities. Blum also served as a member of the Mathematics Panel of Project 2061. The project was to determine how much a typical adult must know about science and technology to be prepared for the return of Halley's Comet. Blum also served as the first woman editor of the International Journal of Algebra and Computation from 1989 to 1991.

Blum served as the deputy director at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) at U.C. Berkeley. She has participated in MSRI's Fermat Fest and has been an organizer of MSRI's "Conversations" between mathematics researchers and mathematics teachers.