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Gail Letzter

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Gail Letzter
Born(1960-09-12)September 12, 1960
New York
DiedSeptember 19, 2024(2024-09-19) (aged 64)[1]
Rockville, Maryland
NationalityAmerican
Alma materB.A., Harvard University
Ph.D., University of Chicago
Known forTheory of quantum symmetric pairs
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsWayne State University

Virginia Tech

National Security Agency
Doctoral advisorI.N. Herstein

Gail Rebecca Letzter (September 12, 1960 – September 19, 2024)[1] was an American mathematician specializing in the representation theory of quantum groups, and formerly technical director of the mathematics research group of the National Security Agency.[2]

Education and career

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Letzter was born in Nyack, New York. She received her B.A. from Harvard University in 1982 and her Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1987. Letzter wrote her Ph.D. dissertation under I.N. Herstein and was later awarded a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship supported by MIT.[3] She held tenured positions in the mathematics departments at Wayne State University[2] and Virginia Tech.[4]

She served as Lie algebra editor of the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society from 2007 - 2011.[5] In 2008 she published a research memoir in the series Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society entitled Invariant Differential Operators for Quantum Symmetric Space.[6] She has been an active member of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM), was elected as an at-large member of the executive committee of the association in 2015 and served on that body from 2016 - 2020.[7] She chaired the AWM policy and advocacy committee from 2016 - 2018. [7] She was one of the primary organizers of the 2015 AWM Research Symposium, which was held at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland.[8] She was an editor of the proceedings of this research symposium.[9]

Research

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1989 marked the beginning of a long collaboration with Anthony Joseph at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. Their joint investigations of quantum groups included the discovery of the locally finite part[10] and other contributions, "which greatly contribute to our understanding of quantized enveloping algebras" according to one reviewer[11].[12][13][14] Subsequently, Letzter began her own seminal analysis of quantum symmetric pairs from the perspective of Hopf algebras, culminating in a complete classification.[15] [16] [6] This work has served as the basis for breakthrough research by others on canonical bases [17], categorification, and geometric representation theory. [18]

Recognition

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Letzter was recognized as a fellow of the Association of Women in Mathematics (AWM) in the class of 2021. Her citation read "For work in government and in AWM on behalf of women in mathematics, leading the AWM Policy and Advocacy Committee to formally establish the Hill visits program to advocate for women and girls with members of Congress, and co-organizing the 2015 AWM symposium and editing its proceedings".[19][20]

Books

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  • Letzter, Gail (2008). Invariant Differential Operators for Quantum Symmetric Spaces. Providence, Rhode Island: American Mathematical Society. ISBN 9780821841310.

References

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  1. ^ a b Funeral home obituary for Gail-Letzter
  2. ^ a b "AWM Election". Association for Women in Mathematics Newsletter. 45 (6): 12–13. November–December 2015.
  3. ^ Gail Letzter at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. ^ "Board of visitors approves 2005 promotions, tenure". Virginia Tech Daily. Virginia Tech. Retrieved 2020-11-05.
  5. ^ "Front Matter" (PDF). Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society. 135 (9). Retrieved 2020-11-05.
  6. ^ a b Letzter, Gail (2008), Invariant differential operators for quantum symmetric spaces, Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 193, Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society, ISBN 978-0-8218-4131-0, MR 2400554
  7. ^ a b "Historical List of AWM Committee Members". Association for Women in Mathematics. Retrieved 2020-11-05.
  8. ^ "AWM Research Symposium 2015". Association for Women in Mathematics. Retrieved 2020-11-05.
  9. ^ Martin, Carla; Chambers, Erin; Letzter, Gail; Grigsby, Julia Elisenda; Ryan, Kathleen; Trivisa, Konstantina; Lauter, Kristin; Flournoy, Nancy, eds. (August 19, 2016). Advances in the Mathematical Sciences: Research from the 2015 Association for Women in Mathematics Symposium. Springer International Publishing. ISBN 9783319341392. Retrieved 2020-11-05.
  10. ^ Joseph, A.; Letzter, G. (1992). "Local Finiteness of the Adjoint Action for Quantized Enveloping Algebras". Journal of Algebra. 153 (2): 289–318. doi:10.1016/0021-8693(92)90157-H. MR 1198203.
  11. ^ (see Math Review 1262429 [1])
  12. ^ Joseph, A.; Letzter, G. (1994). "Separation of Variables for Quantized Enveloping Algebras". American Journal of Mathematics. 116 (1): 127–177. doi:10.2307/2374984. JSTOR 2374984. MR 1262429. Retrieved 2020-11-08.
  13. ^ Joseph, A.; Letzter, G. (1995). "Verma Module Annihilators for Quantized Enveloping Algebras". Annales Scientifiques de l'École Normale Supérieure. 116 (1): 493–526. doi:10.24033/ASENS.1723. MR 1334611.
  14. ^ Joseph, A.; Letzter, G. (1996). "Rosso's Form and Quantized Kac Moody algebras". Mathematische Zeitschrift. 222 (4): 543–571. doi:10.1007/BF02621883. MR 1406268. S2CID 119874745. Retrieved 2020-11-08.
  15. ^ Letzter, Gail (2002), Coideal Subalgebras and Quantum Symmetric Pairs (PDF), Math. Sci. Res. Inst. Publications, vol. 43, Cambridge University Press, pp. 117–166, MR 1913438
  16. ^ Letzter, G. (2003). "Quantum Symmetric Pairs and Their Zonal Spherical Functions". Transformation Groups. 8 (3): 261–291. arXiv:math/0204103. doi:10.1007/s00031-003-0719-9. MR 1996417. S2CID 16003181. Retrieved 2020-11-08.
  17. ^ "Huanchen Bao and Weiqiang Wang Will Receive the 2020 Chevalley Prize". American Mathematical Society. Retrieved 2020-11-08.
  18. ^ Weelinck, T.A.N. (2019). "A topological origin of quantum symmetric pairs". Selecta Mathematica. New Series. 25 (51). arXiv:1804.02315. doi:10.1007/s00029-019-0497-4. MR 3984109. S2CID 119143788.
  19. ^ "The AWM Fellows Program: 2021 Class of AWM Fellows". Association for Women in Mathematics. Retrieved 2020-11-05.
  20. ^ "Adjunct Professor, Gail Letzer named AWM Fellow". Department of Mathematics. University of Maryland. Retrieved 2020-11-06.
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