Lenore Blum
Lenore Blum was born in 1943 in New York. Her family moved to South America. She attended school there. Lenore finished high school and returned to the United States. Upon her return, she applied to her first choice of Universities, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but she was not accepted. She then applied to the Department of Architecture at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. She did not enroll to study mathematics. Lenore realized after taking her first math class she would take many more math classes. Two years later, she moved to Boston. She applied to M.I.T. many more times but was turned down each time. She wanted to go there for two reasons. First, her future husband attended M.I.T. and second it was an outstanding University. She was accepted to Simmons College. In1963 she was awarded her B.S. She was finally accepted to M.I.T.
In 1968, she was awarded received her Ph.D. from M.I.T... Her thesis was Generalized Algebraic Structures: A Model Theoretical Approach. In 1974 to 1987, she served as head or co-Head of the Mathematics and Computer Science Department at Mills College. She was the first holder of the Letts-Villard Chair at Mills College.
Blum actively recruited women to the field of mathematics. She was a member of the American Mathematical Society. She was the Vice President from 1990-1992. Blum has published many papers. She served as Deputy Director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley from 1992-1997. Blum spent 1996-1998 as a Visiting Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at the City University of Hong Kong. She helped develop a parallel theory. She showed that the classical complexity theory, based on the Turing model is inadequate for studying many problems and algorithms in modern scientific computing. In 1999, Blum was appointed Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Blum organized many organizations to help get girls and women involved in the field of mathematics. She organized conference for girls attending high school. She is an asset to Mathematics.
Born: New York City, 1943
Biograhpy submitted by Mary Sanders, HR Student, Fall 2005.
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