Nancy Kopell
Essay Preview: Nancy Kopell
Report this essay
In recent years there have been many strides in equality among the sexes and this new trend has lead to some well deserved recognition and opportunities for some of our more prominent female mathematicians. Mathematics has traditionally been a male dominated field of study and it has taken the work of several brilliant and strong willed women over the past several decades to demonstrate that women deserve a place in this area of study as well as the men. These women have been tireless in their efforts and they have provided like-minded females with role models that they can connect with and try to emulate. One such female mathematician that has had an interesting and successful career is Nancy Kopell. She has proven over the years that she deserves her place as one of the worlds most knowledgeable and renowned female mathematicians.
One of the things that make her such a good role model for young women is the fact that she herself comes from a humble background. She was born and raised on Pelham Parkway in the Bronx and she was the youngest daughter in a family of four. Her parents and older sibling were all well educated with her father working as a accountant and her mother and older sister having majored in mathematics while in school. Perhaps this is the reason why she herself chose to pursue mathematics as a career choice (The Poster Project Biographies). Having made up her mind to study mathematics the next step that she was forced to take was choosing a college to attend. This was difficult because at the time there were very few women mathematicians that she could look at as examples and try to emulate.
The college that she initially decided upon was Cornell University. I t was there that she received her B.S. in mathematics. She then decided to go to graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. During this point in her studies she became painfully aware of the scarcity of fellow female graduate students and faculty. This resulted in her questioning her decision to become a mathematician and doubting her own abilities. She had the good fortune to have a friend, Stephen Smale, as her thesis advisor and he convinced her not to drop out of school. She then went on to receive her Ph.D. in 1967 while studying what she called “very pure mathematics”. It wasnt until she had received her Ph.D. that she decided to change her field of study to Applied Mathematics.
As an Applied Mathematician one of the things that she worked on for example was the development and use of dynamical systems to attack some of the problems commonly associated with the field of Applied Mathematics. One of the things that she developed along with her fellow mathematician and mentor L.N. Howard was a series of papers on pattern formation in oscillating systems. The goal of this sort of mathematics is to help sort out which properties of the units and their interactions have implications for the emergent properties of the networks. Some of the math that she commonly uses includes extensions of the invariant manifold theory, averaging theory, and geometric methods for singularly perturbed equations (Nancy Kopell Oscillators and Networks of Them: Which Differences Make a Difference). These are terms that are usually associated with physics and this isnt surprising when you consider the fact that she works with a variety of other specialist including physiologists and engineers on a daily basis.
One of Kopells current interests is the dynamics of nervous systems, with a special attention to rhythmic behavior in networks of neurons. Kopell normally works on central pattern generators which are neural networks that govern rhythmic motor process, such as swimming, walking, chewing, and breathing. She was able to pursue this research due to the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship that she received in 1990 (Careers That Count: Norwood, Kopell, and Blum). Her work with two biologists, Karen Sigvardt and Thelma Williams, has led to some striking results in understanding the neural processes of swimming in lampreys (Nancy Kopell Oscillators and Networks of Them: Which Make a Difference). This is tangible evidence that her efforts to bridge the gap between math and science have been a success.
She believes that extensive study of these systems will help people to understand how the dynamic properties of local networks help to filter and transfer patterned input from other parts of the nervous system (The Center for Theoretical Biological Physics). For those of who arent biology and math majors all this means is learning how sensations resulting from an injury to our hand travels to our brain and registers as pain. This approach might allow us finally learn about the relationship between the nervous tissue in bodies and the processes that they affect and the true importance of neutrons in governing these processes.
As a result of her close work with biologists she has been called a “biomathematician” which merely refers