Female mathematicians

The majority of mathematicians are male, although more women have entered mathematics since World War II. Women are still a small minority of notables in mathematics.

Cecilia Krieger

Cypra Cecilia Krieger-Dunaij (April 9, 1894 - August 17, 1974) was an Austro-Hungarian (Galician)-born mathematician of Jewish ancestry who lived and worked in Canada. She was the 3rd person (& 1st woman) to earn a Ph.D in mathematics from a university in Canada, in 1930 as well as the 3rd woman to have been awarded a doctorate in any discipline in Canada. Krieger is well-known for having translated two works of Sierpinski in general topology. The Krieger-Nelson Prize, awarded annually by the Canadian Mathematical Society since 1995 for outstanding research by a female mathematician, is named in honour of Krieger and Evelyn Nelson.

Krieger's thesis for her Ph.D, under the supervision of W.J. Webber, was entitled "On the summability of trigonometric series with localized parameters-on Fourier constants and convergence factors of double Fourier series."

Emmy Noether

Amalie Emmy Noether, (23 March 1882 – 14 April 1935) was an influential German mathematician known for her groundbreaking contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. Described by David Hilbert, Albert Einstein and others as the most important woman in the history of mathematics, she revolutionized the theories of rings, fields and algebras. 

After completing her dissertation in 1907 under the supervision of Paul Gordan, she worked at the Mathematical Institute of Erlangen without pay for 7 years. In 1915, she was invited by David Hilbert and Felix Klein to join the mathematics department at the University of Göttingen, a world-renowned center of mathematical research. The philosophical faculty objected, however, and she spent four years lecturing under Hilbert's name.

Her work was the foundation for the second volume of his influential 1931 textbook, Moderne Algebra. By the time of her plenary address at the 1932 International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich, her algebraic acumen was recognized around the world. The following year, Germany's Nazi government dismissed Jews from university positions, and Noether moved to the United States to take up a position at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. In 1935 she underwent surgery for an ovarian cyst and, despite signs of a recovery, died 4 days later at the age of 53.

Noether's mathematical work has been divided into three "epochs". In the first (1908–1919), she made significant contributions to the theories of algebraic invariants and number fields. Her work on differential invariants in the calculus of variations, Noether's theorem, has been called "one of the most important mathematical theorems ever proved in guiding the development of modern physics". 

In the 2nd epoch, (1920–1926), she began work that "changed the face of [abstract] algebra". In her classic paperIdealtheorie in Ringbereichen (Theory of Ideals in Ring Domains, 1921) Noether developed the theory of ideals in commutative rings into a powerful tool with wide-ranging applications. She made elegant use of the ascending chain condition, and objects satisfying it are named Noetherian in her honor.

In the 3rd epoch, (1927–1935), she published major works on noncommutative algebras and hypercomplex numbers and united the representation theory of groups with the theory of modules and ideals. In addition to her own publications, Noether was generous with her ideas and is credited with several lines of research published by other mathematicians, even in fields far removed from her main work, such as algebraic topology.

Sun-Yung Alice Chang

Alice Chang is a Chinese American mathematician specializing in aspects of mathematical analysis ranging from harmonic analysis and partial differential equations to differential geometry. She is a professor of mathematics and chair of the department at Princeton University.

Chang was born in Xian, China in 1948. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in 1970 from National Taiwan University, and her doctorate in 1974 from the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, Chang wrote her thesis on the study of bounded analytic functions.

Working with her husband Paul Yang and others, they produced “deep contributions” to differential equations in relationship to geometry and topology. Chang became a full professor at UCLA in 1980. She was a speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians. She also worked to promote the careers of women in mathematics.

Chang’s research interests include the study of geometric types of nonlinear partial differential equations and problems in isospectral geometry. She was awarded the Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics on January 1995 in San Francisco. This prize is awarded to women who contributed in mathematics research in the past five years. Sun-Yung served as a vice president of the American Mathematical Society for 3 years until 1991.

By Eleanor :)

PS: I also created the Cbox.