2013 WOMEN OF COLOR AWARD WINNERS


”Probably my earliest influence was my mother who interested me in cooking which led me to my first chemistry lab, the kitchen. Next, was my father, the engineer, who taught me the importance of mathematics in design.”—Dr. Camille D’Annunizio


By Lango Deen ”T


he oldest of seven children, I escaped into books whenever I could,” D’Annunzio recalled.


“I loved to solve problems and was good at mathematics and science. When I was in seventh grade, much to my father’s dismay as he wanted me to follow in his footsteps as an engineer, I decided I would get a Ph.D. in math- ematics even though I didn’t really know what that meant at the time.”


As a math major at Cornell University, she add- ed chemistry to the equation to double major. After she graduated in 1977, she joined Merck where she developed potential pharmaceuticals before starting a doctorate one year later.


“I obtained my Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics with support of my parents—in spite of skepti- cal and sometimes prejudiced teachers and professors [with] attitudes toward women in mathematics,” she said.


After completing her doctorate at the Uni- versity of Maryland-College Park in 1985, she worked as a research associate in the Institute of Physical Science and Technology at the Uni- versity of Maryland. While there, D’Annunzio did data analysis for an experiment carried on the National Aeronautics and Space Ad- ministration (NASA) Satellite ISEE3/ICE. The satellite was the first to measure composition of a comet and D’Annunzio expertly showed the composition of both solar wind and initial


Continued on Page 22 20 WOMENOFCOLOR | FALL 2013 www.womenofcolor.net


By October 1985, 28 years ago this Women of Color STEM Confer- ence, a 20-something Camille D’Annunzio was preparing for a celebra- tion: doctoral graduation in applied mathematics.


Since 1980, according to statistics from Margaret Murray, a former professor of mathematics at Virginia Tech and author of “Women Be- coming Mathematicians: Creating a Professional Identity in Post-World War II America,” women have earned 17.6 percent of the mathematics Ph.D.’s awarded in the United States.


Murray’s ‘must-read’ book has been described as a “sociological-his- torical study” of 36 women mathematicians who received their Ph.D.s between the years 1940 and 1959. In his review, Paul Zweifel, a lead- ing theoretical physicist and social commentator, wrote that Murray’s in-depth study of the lives and careers of women mathematicians tries to answer two basic questions, formulated in her preface: “How do women become mathematicians?” and “How do they find satisfying work and earn respect and remuneration in a field largely defined and dominated by men?”


Other questions in subsequent chapters were, he wrote: “marriage and child-rearing, how do girls and young women cope with the societal/ familial attitudes that mathematics is not ‘women’s work?’ and wheth- er academic research was abandoned for teaching and/or industry as a result of subtle or not-so-subtle pressure from the male establishment.


Although Women of Color magazine’s study of the life and math- ematical career of Dr. Camille D’Annunzio isn’t as scholarly, we did attempt to answer some burning questions Murray poses and, perhaps, understand how “women become mathematicians in the leanest times, when social and cultural force are least supportive of their ambitions” and “women graduate students [are] required to prepare tea before colloquia and clean up afterwards while the men hobnobbed with the speaker.”


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84