Mildred Leonora Sanderson (May 12, 1889 – October 10, 1914) was an American mathematician, best known for her mathematical theorem concerning modular invariants.[1][2]
Mildred Leonora Sanderson | |
|---|---|
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| Born | May 12, 1889 Waltham, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | October 15, 1914 (aged 25) |
| Resting place | Mount Feake Cemetery, Waltham |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Thesis | Formal modular invariants with application to binary modular covariants (1913) |
| Doctoral advisor | Leonard Eugene Dickson |
Life
editSanderson was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1889 and was the valedictorian of her class at the Waltham High School.[1] She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1910, winning Senior Honors in Mathematics.[1] She obtained her Ph.D degree from the University of Chicago in 1913,[3] publishing the thesis (Sanderson 1913) in which she set forth her mathematical theorem. She was Leonard Eugene Dickson's first female doctoral student.[1][3]
After completing her Ph.D., Sanderson briefly taught at the University of Wisconsin before her untimely death in 1914 due to tuberculosis.[1][4]
Sanderson's theorem
edit
Sanderson's theorem (Sanderson 1913, p.490) states: "To any modular invariant of a system of forms under any group of linear transformations with coefficients in the field , there corresponds a formal invariant under such that for all sets of values in the field of the coefficients of the system of forms." Often this theorem was cited as “Miss Sanderson’s Theorem”.[1]
![{\displaystyle {\rm {GF}}[p^{n}]}](https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/e17775a5f5b70bb74654dba73c3e22d2b1311930)
Recognition
editShe is mentioned in the 2008 book Pioneering women in American mathematics: the pre-1940 PhD's, by Judy Green and Jeanne LaDuke.[4]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f "Mildred Leonora Sanderson". www.agnesscott.edu. Retrieved 2018-03-14.
- ^ Rutherford (2007, p.39)
- ^ a b Mildred Sanderson at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ a b Green, Judy; LaDuke, Jeanne (2008). Pioneering Women in American Mathematics — The Pre-1940 PhD's. History of Mathematics. Vol. 34 (1st ed.). American Mathematical Society, The London Mathematical Society. ISBN 978-0-8218-4376-5. Biography on p.542-543 of the Supplementary Material at AMS
- Rutherford, Daniel Edwin (2007) [1932], Modular invariants, Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics and Mathematical Physics, No. 27, Ramsay Press, ISBN 978-1-4067-3850-6, MR 0186665
- Sanderson, Mildred (1913), "Formal Modular Invariants with Application to Binary Modular Covariants", Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, 14 (4), Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society: 489–500, doi:10.2307/1988702, ISSN 0002-9947, JSTOR 1988702