Linda Keen | Biography

Linda Keen devotes her time and energies to some of the hottest topics of the day. Her work in complex analysis and dynamical systems deals with the mathematics responsible for the vibrant graphics seen in science shows, fractal art, and lifelike computer animations. For more than 30 years, her research has been funded by grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Keen has helped evaluate other postdoctoral fellowships for the NSF as well as for NATO. She is also active in the mathematical community, through her professional participation on various editorial boards and steering committees. Her influence has been felt at local and national levels regarding such pressing issues as women and minority involvement, librarianship, project funding, educational and test standards, research goals, and professional ethics. Among her most visible posts have been the presidency of the Association for Women in Mathematics (1985-1986), and the vice-presidency of the American Mathematical Society (1992-1995).

Linda Keen was born Linda Goldway in New York City on August 9, 1940. Her father was an English teacher who did not take his daughter's interest in the comparatively obscure language of mathematics personally. In fact, he encouraged her to study at a local magnet school, the Bronx High School of Science. She would stay in New York throughout her early academic career, earning a B.S. in 1960 from City College, an M.S. from New York University (NYU) two years later, and a Ph.D. from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 1964.

Keen was fortunate to have as her Ph.D. advisor the celebrated Lipman Bers. "Lipa," as he was called, was a political refugee throughout the 1930s, coming to the U.S. from Latvia via Prague. At NYU, he was a colleague and friend as much as an authority on complex analysis. In 1964, it was still quite rare for a male mathematician to be even tolerant of women. Yet, as Bers said himself in an interview with Donald Albers and Constance Reid, it never occurred to him that women could be intellectually inferior to men. While studying with Bers, Keen focused on the analytic aspects of Riemann surfaces.

Keen's obituary for Bers highlighted his lack of pretense and approachability. Classes were held Friday afternoons, so Bers extended the time with his students to include lunch--the "children's lunch" as he called it. Keen, who was almost always the youngest at the table, would be given the check to divide in her head. Once, when the "children" all insisted that the oldest person take the chore, Bers was unprepared and his calculations were incorrect.

Bers' commitment to political activism and human rights, resulting from his years of living beneath the shadow of dictatorships, seems to have influenced Keen as well. From 1992 to 1996, she chaired the special advisory committee to write Ethical Guidelines and Procedures for the American Mathematical Society (AMS) Committee on Professional Ethics (COPE). The document developed by the special advisory committee provides professional mathematicians with guidance about ethical issues including giving credit for new findings, refereeing papers responsibly, protecting "whistle blowers," and social responsibility.

Among the issues with which the committee's report grappled are those arising from work in industry and with the government, as well as standards of conduct within professional organizations such as the AMS. Protecting confidentiality, anonymity, and privileged information is given top priority. As the guidelines state, "Freedom to publish must sometimes yield to security concerns, but mathematicians should resist excessive secrecy demands whether by government or private concerns." Those AMS members who advise graduate students are now expected to paint a realistic picture of employment prospects, and not to exploit their students by giving them heavy workloads at low pay. The guidelines also include a standard nondiscrimination policy. The special advisory committee's proposed guidelines were ratified in 1995 by a 25 to 3 vote.

Keen has served her profession in similar capacities a number of times. She began her involvement with COPE in 1986, and became a member of various policy boards for the AMS throughout the 1990s. Keen has also worked with the International Mathematics Union. She was of a member of the panels charged with evaluating the mathematics departments of the State University of New York-Potsdam and Rutgers University-Newark, and the minority program at the University of Minnesota. Keen was also a charter member of the Mayor's Commission for Science and Technology of the City of New York, serving on this commission from 1984-1985.

Keen's professional career has taken her to various institutions in her home state, including Hunter College and the City University of New York. When Lehman College, formerly the Bronx campus of Hunter, became independent in 1968, Keen remained on the faculty. She was promoted to full professor at Lehman in 1974 and presently holds a dual appointment in the Graduate Center Doctoral Faculties in Computer Science and in Mathematics. Keen has also held visiting professorships at the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, Boston University, Princeton, and MIT, as well as at mathematical institutions in several foreign countries, including Germany, Brazil, Denmark, Great Britain, and China. Keen's editorial services are equally international. Currently she serves on editorial boards for the Journal of Geometric Analysis and the Annales of the Finnish Academy of Sciences.

Throughout her career, Keen has preferred working collaboratively with other mathematicians to working alone. During the 1980s she worked with Caroline Series on the geometric aspects of Riemann surfaces, and, more recently, she contributed to the field of dynamical systems in cooperation with Paul Blanchard, Robert Devaney, and Lisa Goldberg. As Keen puts it, "I am basically a social person and enjoy people." She currently counts her husband and two children as her chief supporters, worthy successors in this regard to her father and Lipman Bers.