Jean Taylor
Biography:
Jean
Taylor was born in San Mateo, California on September 17, 1944. She later moved to Sacramento. As a child she excelled in her
academics. After high school she
enrolled in Mount Holyoke in Mass. because she had never been east of the Rocky
Mountains. She majored in
chemistry and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, first in her class in 1966. Taylor, however, through her rebellious
childhood, learned to question authority and was not able to do so in the
chemistry laboratory at Mount Holyoke.
This began to inspire her exploration into other fields of study, but
she still had a love for chemistry.
She later enrolled in the University of California at Berkley where she
was influenced by her hiking club and her boyfriend to audit algebraic topology
and differential geometry. These
courses encouraged her to switch her emphases to mathematics but yet she still
received her master’s degree in physical chemistry in 1968. Later, she
moved to England shortly after her wedding of her long-time boyfriend,
Frederick J. Almgren. Here, she
pursued her master’s degree in mathematics at the University of Warwick and
graduated in 1971.
Soon after, she returned to
the U.S. and attended Princeton’s doctoral program in mathematics. In 1973 she received her PhD. and
focused her dissertation on the topic of “Regularity of the Singular Set
of Two-Dimensional Area-Minimizing Flat Chains Modulo 3 in R^3.” This solved the problem on length and
smoothness of soap-film triple functions curves, which had puzzled
mathematicians for centuries.
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In Depth Mathematics
Introduction to the Worksheet
Classroom Worksheet
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