Women And Extraordinary Women: Record Holder in Math

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Record Holder in Math

Ruth Lawrence of England, United Kingdom holds the record of youngest person passing O-Level and A-Level exams. She completed the O-Level exam at the age of eight, A-level at the age of nine and then went on to studying Mathematics and Physics in Oxford University. She got her Bachelors degree in Pure Mathematics from Oxford at the age of 13, a record in modern history of Oxford. More details can be found in this Wikipedia link

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My parents are originally from India and I spent quite a bit of time there where still today women are third class citizens in rural villages and small towns. They are being constantly sexually assaulted in streets, roads, trains and buses and I also painfully experienced those much. I loved math and science and always wanted to be an astronaut. However, while growing up, I was constantly told and reminded that such fields are not for girls/women as they do not have the brain or the mental capacity to succeed in those fields. After moving to the US as a teenager-kid, I saw such prejudices exist even here. Not only that, but situations seem to be worse here with women being brainwashed that they need to groom themselves all the time to look beautiful so that they get good husbands or rich husbands!! At first I refused to believe it. However, my female students also told me the same thing that girls in school get into fashion and ignore math and science fields so that they come out as beautiful and not nerdy and get good dates!!! Such ideas are also seemed to be enforced by TV, magazines and newspapers where only news about Kim Kardashia or such celebrity reality stars and models are published. But there are thousands and millions of extraordinary women out there who are great achievers in various fields but at the same time loving daughter, mother, sister and wife. Where are the stories of those women? How come their news are never published? Who will I follow as my mentors? I have a PhD now in Mathematics, and do research in Mathematics and Computational Science. I am also a professor. Where will I find the role models so that my daughters, sisters and other women students can follow? So, this blog is trying to capture the stories of such extraordinary women. Now and then I will try to give in my opinions also :-).