2013 WOMEN OF COLOR AWARD WINNERS ”Probably my earliest influence was my mother who interested me in cooking which led me to my first chemistry lab, the kitchen. Next, was my father, the engineer, who taught me the importance of mathematics in design.”—Dr. Camille D’Annunizio
By Lango Deen he oldest of seven children, I escaped into books whenever I could,” D’Annunzio recalled. “I loved to solve problems and was good at mathematics and science. When I was in seventh grade, much to my father’s dismay as he wanted me to follow in his footsteps as an engineer, I decided I would get a Ph.D. in mathematics even though I didn’t really know what that meant at the time.”
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As a math major at Cornell University, she added chemistry to the equation to double major. After she graduated in 1977, she joined Merck where she developed potential pharmaceuticals before starting a doctorate one year later. “I obtained my Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics with support of my parents—in spite of skeptical and sometimes prejudiced teachers and professors [with] attitudes toward women in mathematics,” she said. After completing her doctorate at the University of Maryland-College Park in 1985, she worked as a research associate in the Institute of Physical Science and Technology at the University of Maryland. While there, D’Annunzio did data analysis for an experiment carried on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Satellite ISEE3/ICE. The satellite was the first to measure composition of a comet and D’Annunzio expertly showed the composition of both solar wind and initial
By October 1985, 28 years ago this Women of Color STEM Conference, a 20-something Camille D’Annunzio was preparing for a celebration: doctoral graduation in applied mathematics. Since 1980, according to statistics from Margaret Murray, a former professor of mathematics at Virginia Tech and author of “Women Becoming Mathematicians: Creating a Professional Identity in Post-World War II America,” women have earned 17.6 percent of the mathematics Ph.D.’s awarded in the United States. Murray’s ‘must-read’ book has been described as a “sociological-historical study” of 36 women mathematicians who received their Ph.D.s between the years 1940 and 1959. In his review, Paul Zweifel, a leading theoretical physicist and social commentator, wrote that Murray’s in-depth study of the lives and careers of women mathematicians tries to answer two basic questions, formulated in her preface: “How do women become mathematicians?” and “How do they find satisfying work and earn respect and remuneration in a field largely defined and dominated by men?” Other questions in subsequent chapters were, he wrote: “marriage and child-rearing, how do girls and young women cope with the societal/ familial attitudes that mathematics is not ‘women’s work?’ and whether academic research was abandoned for teaching and/or industry as a result of subtle or not-so-subtle pressure from the male establishment. Although Women of Color magazine’s study of the life and mathematical career of Dr. Camille D’Annunzio isn’t as scholarly, we did attempt to answer some burning questions Murray poses and, perhaps, understand how “women become mathematicians in the leanest times, when social and cultural force are least supportive of their ambitions” and “women graduate students [are] required to prepare tea before colloquia and clean up afterwards while the men hobnobbed with the speaker.”
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WOMENOFCOLOR | FALL 2013
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