Helen Frances Cullen (January 4, 1919 – August 25, 2007)[1] was an American mathematician specializing in topology. She worked for many years as a professor of mathematics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst[2] and was the first female faculty member in the mathematics department at Amherst.[3] She was known as the author of the book Introduction to General Topology (Heath, 1968),[4] as well as for her outspoken antisemitism.[5]

Education and career

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Cullen was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and studied at Girls' Latin School and Radcliffe College.[2] She earned a master's degree at the University of Michigan in 1944,[6] and completed her Ph.D. at Michigan in 1950. Her dissertation, A Set of Parabolic Regular Curve Families Filling the Plane and Certain Related Reimann Surfaces, was supervised by Wilfred Kaplan.[7] She was a faculty member in the department of mathematics at Amherst from 1949 until her retirement as a professor emerita in 1992.[2]

Recognition

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In 1998 the Girls' Latin School – Boston Latin Academy Association listed her as one of their outstanding alumnae.[3]

References

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  1. ^ "Deaths of AMS Members" (PDF), Notices of the AMS, 55 (5): 618, May 2008
  2. ^ a b c Obituary: Helen Cullen, professor emerita of Mathematics, UMassAmherst News & Media Relations, August 27, 2007
  3. ^ a b Outstanding alumnae/i, Girls' Latin School – Boston Latin Academy Association, Inc., archived from the original on 2016-01-17
  4. ^ Copeland, A. H. Jr., "Introduction to general topology", Mathematical Reviews, MR 0221455
  5. ^ Tobin, Gary A.; Weinberg, Aryeh Kaufmann; Ferer, Jenna (2009), The UnCivil University: Intolerance on College Campuses, Lexington Books, p. 160, ISBN 9780739132685
  6. ^ "Master of Arts", Proceedings of the Board of Regents, University of Michigan, August 1944, p. 666
  7. ^ Helen F. Cullen at the Mathematics Genealogy Project