Topologist Mary-Elizabeth Hamstrom Dies at 82.

February 10, 2010

Esteemed topologist Mary-Elizabeth Hamstrom (emeritus professor, University of Illinois), who had joined the MAA in 1959, passed away in December 2009. She was 82. 

An authority in pointset and geometric topology—with a special interest in spaces of homeomorphisms of manifolds—Hamstrom authored or coauthored dozens of research articles. She supervised nine PhD candidates, the most recent in 1999, the year she retired.

Hamstrom received her A.B. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1948. During her senior year she wrote to R.L. Moore at the University Texas, asking for recommendations on what to study. He told her not to read anything in the field of her proposed coursework. Instead, he recommended she come under his tutelage via the now well-known Moore Method.

Hamstrom completed her PhD in 1952—Moore was her adviser—and took a position at Goucher College where she remained (apart from spending the academic year 1956-57 at the Institute for Advanced Study) until 1961. She then accepted a position as associate professor at the University of Illinois. Promoted to full professor in 1966, she was one of only four female full professors in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at that time. She also held visiting appointments at the University of Warwick and at the University of North Carolina.

Mary Ellen Rudin, a friend from her Texas days, said this:

"All of our lives, in spite of minimal contact, Mary-Elizabeth and I have had a friendship based on mutual understanding. We were both very unconventional women in all sorts of ways. We were both serious mathematicians. R. L. Moore almost simultaneously was our major professor for our PhDs. When we entered the mathematical community there were few other women. While we were students, Moore, who felt using other peoples mathematical ideas was immoral, effectively prevented his two women students from contact, either social or mathematical. Later, when Mary-Elizabeth's mathematical interests and knowledge became much broader, I cheered her on; and when mine turned to set theory she did the same for me. Mary-Elizabeth was the precise, helpful, referee of several of my papers. She was a wonderful friend and wonderful mathematician and really interesting gal."

Source: University of Illinois (pdf)