Louise Hay: Trailblazing Mathematician and Educator

Louise Hay born in metz France, to polish-jewish parents. The family immigrated to New York in 1946 after spending part of WW II as refugee in Switzerland. Louise received her B.A in mathematics from Swarthmore College in 1956 and her master's degree from Cornell University in 1959. She then took an instructorship at mount Holyoke College after her husband, whom she had married after her junior year at Swathmore, began a tenure-track position at Smith college.  In 1963 Hay returned to cornell to complete her Ph.D in math, finishing her dissertation in 1965 (after a brief interruption for the birth of twins) . She returned to Mount Holyoke as an assistant professor, the in 1968 after a divorce, movet to the university of illinois at chicago as an associate professor. In 1980 Hay was appointed as head of the deparment of math (later to become the department of maths, statistics and computer science), becoming at thime the only female head of a major research-oriented university math deparment in the US. She remained as head until her death from cancer in 1989, having developed a world-wide reputation for her research in math logic, recursive function theory and theoretical computer science. Hay was a founding member of the association of women in mathematics. In 1990 the AWM established the louise hay award for contributions to mathematic education. The purpose of this award is to recognize outstanding achievements in any area of mathematical education. As reported by the notices of the american mathematical society: '' While louise hay was widely recognized for her contributions to mathematical logic and for her strong leadership as head of the department of mathematics, statistics and computer science at the university of illinois at chicago, her devotio to students ad her lifelong commitment to nurturing the talent of young women and men secure her reputation as a consummate educator. The annual presentation of this award is intended to highlight the importance f mathematics education and to evoke the memory of all that hay exemplified as a teacher, scholar, administrator, and human being''

Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, and grew up in Munich, in a family of independent-minded, nonpracticing Jews. Little s known about his childhood. Because he was slow learning to speak (he was not fully  fluent even at the age of nine) he was at various times thought to be mentally retard. Some experts have speculated that he was dyslexic. A headmaster once told his father that what Einstein chose as a profession wouldn't matter, because ''he'll never make a success at anything'. At six he began learning to play the violin and became a gifted ameteur violinist, maintaining this skill troughout his life. Einstein attended the Luitpold Gymnasiumin munich, which he disliked intensely for its authoritarianism. He was deeply interested in physics and maths and read eagerly in both subjects. Ultimately he rebelled, leaving Luitpold at fifteen without receiving his diploma. Without a gymnasium diploma, he couldn't enter a german university, so he enrolled in the swiss federal polytechnic school in zurich. He was so impressed with the democratic atmosphere of switzerland that he formally renounced his german citizenship at the age of sixteen, in 1901 he was granted swiss citizenship, which he retained for the rest of his life. After graduating he held several teaching jobs and became a technical assistant in the swiss  patent office in Berne, where he remained for six years. The job's great advantage, he later said, was that it gave him time to think about physics. Between 1901 and 1904 Einstein published five papers on physics. In one he virtually proved the existence of molecules, solely by the use of theory; in another he showed that