> > Here is a question for Jenny Harrison: what would it take for a woman > > who is an associate or Full professor somewhere to get an invitation > > for a full professorship in your department? Would 3-4 recent Annals > > quality papers look impressive to them? And of course it would be > > expected to have an NSF grant. Also a few key conference talks might > > be needed so her name is on people's tongues. This is my naive guess > > as to what a bare minimum would be. The papers award is meant to > > replace the need to actually submit to Annals.
> I have never sat on the hiring committee, but I regularly attend > department meetings when a case for appointment is brought forward. > Although many factors are considered, letters of recommendation > matter the most -- not NSF grants, prizes, ICM talks, or publications > in the Annals. However, if a mathematician had achieved some of > these, one would think that strong letters would be easy to come by. > (I.e. Christina Sormani's criteria are probably sufficient but not > necessary.) A mathematical presentation given by a faculty member who > supports the appointment is also important so that we can all see > what mathematics has been done by the candidate. Comparison with > others in the field is a factor and this is usually done in letters > of recommendation. I am never sure how people can be compared so > definitively, though. It is just the common practice. I cannot > imagine our department turning someone down because she did not have > an NSF grant as long as her letters were strong.
Does anyone have input as to how to ensure the letters are top quality?
I have seen letters written for job candidates at CUNY which are so easily interpretted in a negative light that, regardless of the intention of the letter writer, practically elliminate the candidate from contention. In fact I have taken it upon myself to email a letter writer more than once pointing out exactly how a letter can be construed negatively and received new letters!!!!
Phrases I've seen interpretted negatively: "she works well with coauthors", "her research would be even more stellar if she spent less time on service", and of course the usual "she works hard".
Although I used the pronown "she" here, I've seen similar phrasing viewed in a negative way for men as well when there is someone on the committee particularly opposed to that man.
Perhaps someone should write an article for the Notices about how to write a tight letter of recommendation: one which doesn't have lines that can be twisted into the negative, and one that is careful to give plenty adjectives describing theorems, and yes, how to compare mathematicians, because as arbitrary as that may seem it is an essential component for deciding whether someone is worthy of position in a similar department.
> But let me close with this: It used to be very important to be in > residence at a place such as Berkeley in order to do cutting edge > research. The only way to know about what was going on was through > superstars in residence, who were sent preprints from everyone around > the world who wanted their attention, and through lectures of > visitors and faculty. This was a system frought with problems of > abuse, including favoritism and retaliation. We should all be > grateful to the internet for changing all of this. We can now > directly find out for ourselves what is happening in our fields. If > you have good support from colleagues and a reasonable teaching load, > it hardly matters where you are anymore. With access to knowledge, > time to think, and peace of mind, many things are possible for our > creative minds. Wikipedia, Amazon.com, GoogleBooks, and the > MathSciNet are indispensable. You don't need prizes and you don't > need to be at Berkeley.
There are still many reasons to be in a top department: teaching loads are often lower, postdocs are available, graduate students are more likely to end up as future leaders, seminars are well funded, courses are taught by visiting profesors from around the world, libraries are well stocked...
In my case, CUNY has a high teaching load but excellent location which allows us to run regular seminars in many fields and also to attend seminars and special topics courses at places nearby. I have definitely grown significantly as a mathematician learning from people because of its location. I am not as quick to learn from papers as from talks and so being here has been crucial for me. I will add that I have managed to avoid the high teaching load with grant funding.
If I were located at a university with a 2-3 load, only a weekly colloquium rather than a differential geometry seminar, and no regular access to top mathematicians, I would be a much narrower mathematician. I might still have good results but I would be less likely to have broadened my knowledge significantly past my postdoctoral work.
This is why it is still essentially to get more women to top departments beyond the postdoc level.
> > But let me close with this: It used to be very important to be in > > residence at a place such as Berkeley in order to do cutting edge > > research. The only way to know about what was going on was through > > superstars in residence, who were sent preprints from everyone > around > > the world who wanted their attention, and through lectures of > > visitors and faculty. This was a system frought with problems of > > abuse, including favoritism and retaliation. We should all be > > grateful to the internet for changing all of this. We can now > > directly find out for ourselves what is happening in our > fields. If > > you have good support from colleagues and a reasonable teaching > load, > > it hardly matters where you are anymore. With access to > knowledge, > > time to think, and peace of mind, many things are possible for our > > creative minds. Wikipedia, Amazon.com, GoogleBooks, and the > > MathSciNet are indispensable. You don't need prizes and you don't > > need to be at Berkeley.
> There are still many reasons to be in a top department: teaching loads > are > often lower, postdocs are available, graduate students are more likely > to > end up as future leaders, seminars are well funded, courses are taught > by > visiting profesors from around the world, libraries are well > stocked...
> In my case, CUNY has a high teaching load but excellent location which > allows > us to run regular seminars in many fields and also to attend seminars > and special > topics courses at places nearby. I have definitely grown > significantly as a mathematician > learning from people because of its location. I am not as quick to > learn from papers > as from talks and so being here has been crucial for me. I will add > that I have managed > to avoid the high teaching load with grant funding.
> If I were located at a university with a 2-3 load, only a weekly > colloquium rather than > a differential geometry seminar, and no regular access to top > mathematicians, I would > be a much narrower mathematician. I might still have good results but > I would be less > likely to have broadened my knowledge significantly past my > postdoctoral work.
> This is why it is still essentially to get more women to top > departments beyond the postdoc > level.
You seemed to have found a path that works well for you. Thanks for sharing this. It can indeed be very helpful to be surrounded by mathematicians talking about math of interest to us. I agree completely that it is essential to get more women into top departments beyond the postdoc level for this reason, to provide role models for students in these departments, and to diminish gender bias in society. My point was that mathematicians do not have to despair who are not currently at a top department. I spend more time watching streaming videos of lectures than attending live lectures. I get more out of these than live lectures as I can stop and look up definitions and study examples at my own pace. I can instantly look up the speaker's papers and see more results if I get interested. My questions are answered quickly and deeply through surfing. I rarely attend conferences and am based at home for my research. I rarely speak with anyone at Berkeley beyond my students about my work. I spend vastly more time reading papers online, reading webpages, exchanging emails with people far away than I do talking to people in the Berkeley halls. My amazon.com account is large and books are overflowing. I could be anywhere and be a happy and productive mathematician as long as I did not have a heavy teaching load. For me, this alternate path is superior to the gregarious mathematician model as I have been able to follow my own instincts and not be influenced by powerful egos and personalities in the department.
On Nov 20, 2006, at 10:57 PM, sorma...@member.ams.org wrote:
> Jenny Harrison Wrote:
>> I think that our chances of attracting support for this would be >> improved if we limited awards for recent breakthroughs,
> I would like to add that officially NSF grants are supposed to be based > on quality of the proposal, work resulting from prior support, and the > past > five years of research. In fact, the limitation to the past five years > of > research has hurt the assessment of women with recent maternity leaves.
Perhaps one helpful thing in another area would be to open up NSF applications to information about events such as serious illness, maternity leaves (I would want to generalize that to recent births or adoptions --- not all universities have decent maternity leave policies), etc.
> "If only Karen Uhlenbeck had proved > her results before 40, we would have had a female Field's medalist,"
Well, excuses for posting what other people told me informally... I'm not in the field, buy I was told that she actually almost got it! The story says that this was in the times when there was no interaction with the Soviet mathematicians. Karen and a Russian lady (I must be getting old, I forgot the name, but she was already a top one) independently and near simulaneously proved a major result. According to the story, the Russian lady got her result a tad earlier, but nobody in the West knew. Continues the story that the Fields medal was given to a third person, to avoid conflict. I guess that person in addition to help bypass the US-URSS competition also handily was a man :). Ever since, for me personally Karen was as good as a any Fields medalist. I just have a huge admirationn for her.
I never heard that, wow! I wonder if there are examples where this has happened to two men, or perhaps both got the award? On a quick perusal of the entire list of Field's medalists http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal it appears to me that sharing is not part of the Field's mentality. Looking further on the wiki page is a section on "Unusual circumstances". If we can verify this story, it should be recorded here, for all to see. But playing the devil's advocate, I doubt we can verify it. Committee members over the years will likely have different impressions and memories of others who almost made it, and unless we could get a clear statement, it would not be a story for the history books. But I would love for Karen to be recognized more broadly.
>> "If only Karen Uhlenbeck had proved >> her results before 40, we would have had a female Field's medalist,"
> Well, excuses for posting what other people told me informally... I'm > not in the field, buy I was told that she actually almost got it! > The story says that this was in the times when there was no > interaction > with the Soviet mathematicians. Karen and a Russian lady (I must be > getting old, I forgot the name, but she was already a top one) > independently and near simulaneously proved a major result. According > to the story, the Russian lady got her result a tad earlier, but > nobody in the West knew. Continues the story that the Fields medal > was > given to a third person, to avoid conflict. I guess > that person in addition to help bypass the US-URSS competition also > handily was a man :). > Ever since, for me personally Karen was as good as a any Fields > medalist. I just have a huge admirationn for her.
> Perhaps one helpful thing in another area would be to open up NSF > applications to information about events such as serious illness, > maternity leaves (I would want to generalize that to recent births or > adoptions --- not all universities have decent maternity leave > policies), etc.
Interestingly I know someone who served on an NSF panel in which a guy was dismissed for a lack of publishing and then learned later he had had cancer and felt really bad the decision was made without that knowledge. This person suggested that I mention my maternity leaves and particularly the fact that I was seriously ill during the second pregnancy on my NSF application. I didn't take the advise thinking the proposal looked strong enough without it and that I did not have obvious publishing gaps. Actually the gaps are so delayed (since everything takes two years to publish) that it is only now that my record is starting to look bad. This year, I do mention the maternity leaves within the prior support (explaining why it was spread over 5 years). I doubt I'll get the grant anyway at this point so I might as well give an excuse for the gap. I'll report if there is any obvious response to this on the panel's response and if I do get a grant, then maybe it does help.
I have never heard Marianne's story or that Karen Uhlenbeck was too old for the Fields Medal.
She was born in 1942 and so was 40 in 1982, the year she won a MacArthur Fellowship. This info is available in S. Ambrose et al. "Journeys of Women in Science and and Engineering, No Universal Constants", Temple University Press and on her webpage:
In S Donaldson, "Remarks on gauge theory, complex geometry and 4-manifold topology", in M Atiyah and D Iagolnitzer (eds.), Fields Medallists Lectures (Singapore, 1997), 384-403, he mentions that Uhlenbeck's papers that appeared around 1982 "contained essentially all the analysis required to put this picture on a firm footing. The papers do not discuss "bubbling" explicitly - perhaps the arguments were supposed to be obvious to experts by analogy with the work of Sacks and Uhlenbeck in the harmonic maps case."
The winners in 1982 were Connes, Thurston and Yau. Interestingly Hamilton's paper introducing the Ricci flow appeared in 1982 which ultimately has beaten out Thurston's approach to Poincare. One never knows what mathematics will ultimately prove more useful. Interestingly Gromov also would have qualified that year. And isn't it amazing two out of three Fields medals went to people in geometric analysis?
There will always be many great mathematicians overlooked for a Fields Medal because it needs to be rewarded to the young and thus only to people whose mathematics not only comes to them when they are young but is clearly influencial and important within a couple of years. Obviously there will be field bias depending on the committee.
What is more of a concern is why there are so few women ICM speakers and if we need to nominate more women for Fields Medals in order to get them considered for positions as an ICM speaker. I don't think we need to follow the age rules in these nominations!
