Portrait of Karen Uhlenbeck

Birthday profile

Karen Uhlenbeck

Karen Uhlenbeck, American mathematician

Born
August 24, 1942
Age in 2026
84
Zodiac sign
Virgo
Birth year
1942

About Karen Uhlenbeck

Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck ForMemRS (born August 24, 1942) is an American mathematician and one of the founders of modern geometric analysis. She is a professor emerita of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, where she held the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair. She is currently a distinguished visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and a visiting senior research scholar at Princeton University. Uhlenbeck was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2007. She won the 2019 Abel Prize for "her pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory, and integrable systems, and for the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics." She is the first, and so far only, woman to win the prize since its inception in 2003. She donated half of the prize money to organizations which promote more engagement of women and other minorities in research mathematics. Uhlenbeck also won the National Medal of Science in 2000, and the Leroy P.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Karen Uhlenbeck was born

Karen Uhlenbeck was born in 1942. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1942

  • #1 song"White Christmas" – Bing Crosby
  • Top movieCasablanca
  • Best-selling bookThe Song of Bernadette – Franz Werfel

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst Negro League World Series
  • Top headlineBattle of Midway becomes turning point of WWII in the Pacific
  • Technology milestoneEnrico Fermi achieves first nuclear chain reaction
  • Defining fadRationing and war bonds
  • Notable inventionNapalm
  • World population2.35 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderFranklin D. Roosevelt
  • Sports championSt. Louis Cardinals (World Series)
  • U.S. population134.9M

1942 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Karen Uhlenbeck's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19422026
Gas$0.20$3.45/gal
Average home$5,600$435,000
Average income$3,800$67,500
Minimum wage$0.30$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.27$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population134.9M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.