About Cathleen Synge Morawetz
Cathleen Synge Morawetz was a Canadian mathematician who spent much of her career in the United States. Morawetz's research was mainly in the study of the partial differential equations governing fluid flow, particularly those of mixed type occurring in transonic flow. She was professor emerita at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at the New York University, where she had also served as director from 1984 to 1988. She was president of the American Mathematical Society from 1995 to 1996. She was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1998. In 1981, she became the first woman to deliver the Gibbs Lecture of The American Mathematical Society, and in 1982, presented an Invited Address at a meeting of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Morawetz said her father was influential in stimulating her interest in mathematics, but he wondered whether her studying mathematics would be wise (suggesting they might fight like the Bernoulli brothers).
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