Behold! British-Born Nigerian Maths Genius •First Black Woman To Publish An Article In The Annals Of Mathematics Founded In 1884.


SEYI GESINDE x-rays the life and achievements of Dr Katherine Adebola Okikiolu, an associate professor of Mathematics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in the United States, who as a mathematical analyst focuses most of her research on the area of spectral geometry, to solve
problems in spectral geometry.

Katherine Adebola Okikiolu is a British-born Nigerian Mathematician living in the United States of America (USA), who recently emerged the first black to win the most prestigious young person’s award in Mathematics, the Sloan Research Fellowship. She has been described as “a brilliant mathematician” by authorities in Mathematics in the US, and currently, she is an associate professor of Mathematics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in the US.

Mathematics seems to be a family heritage of the Okikiolus, as both parents of Katherine who she obviously takes after are mathematicians. Her father, George Okikiolu is a mathematician and an inventor said to have written more mathematics papers than any African mathematician, while her mother, a Briton, Hans Lindblad is also a mathematician.

Born in England in 1965, Katherine studied Mathematics at the prestigious Cambridge University and left with a Bachelor of Arts degree, while she left for the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for her post-graduate studies where he bagged her Ph.D degree.

It was at UCLA after her Ph.D that she teamed up with two of her colleagues to propound a theory which is aimed at solving what they termed: “A problem concerning asymptotic of determinants of Toeplitz operators on the sphere and a conjecture of Peter Jones, characterising subsets of rectifiable curves in Euclidean n-space.”

This propelled them to exhibit what is described by authorities in mathematics as a “first rate mathematical abilities.” Two years after their attempt at solving the problem, Katherine became a teacher and an assistant professor at another Ivy League university in the US, the Princeton University where she stayed for two years.

Thereafter, she became a visiting assistant professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). For her exemplary scholarly activities, Katherine, in 1997, got the status of a full resident of the United States. And as if that year was marked as a year of honour for her, in June of the same year, Katherine was decorated as the first black to win the Sloan Research Fellowship, the most prestigious award for young Mathematics researchers in the US.

She later left MIT to work with professionals at University of California at San Diego (UCSD) as an associate professor of mathematics.

A catalogue of Katherine’s achievements apart from a Ph.D, postdoctoral work at Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study and MIT and the prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship she won in 1997, she is also a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers with a $500,000 prize.

In 2001, she became the first black woman to publish an article in the Annals of Mathematics, a journal of research papers in pure mathematics founded in 1884. She speaks further about herself and programme:

What it entails to be a mathematical analyst.
I am a mathematical analyst, and most of my research is in the area of spectral geometry. Problems in spectral geometry are also studied by various kinds of geometers, number theorists, applied mathematicians, mathematical physicists, and others.

What is Spectral geometry?
Spectral geometry most usually means the study of how the geometry of an object is related to the natural frequencies of the object. These are the frequencies at which the object can vibrate. A vibrating object often produces a sound, and the frequencies can be heard as the dominant tone and the overtones of the sound. The well known question highlighting what spectral geometry is all about is the question “Can one hear the shape of a drum?” I am a mathematical analyst, and most of my research is in the area of spectral geometry. Problems in spectral geometry are also studied by various kinds of geometers, number theorists, applied mathematicians, mathematical physicists, and others.

In mathematical terms, the natural frequencies of an object (or rather their squares) are the Eigen values of a partial differential operator called the Laplacian. This Laplacian takes each function defined on the object and differentiates it twice to give a new function. The Eigen values of the Laplacian form an infinite sequence of numbers tending to infinity. In spectral geometry we study how these numbers depends on the shape of the object.

For people who like to know the full story, I should mention that many spectral geometers (including me) who work on the Laplacian on smooth manifolds study the whole sequence of Eigen values of the Laplacian. Now the low Eigen values can give accurate values for the frequencies at which a real life object vibrates, but the very high Eigen values do not correspond to genuine physical vibrations of the object because of molecular forces and damping. These effects are not included in the model where the vibration is driven by the Laplacian alone. This means that my research is rather different from that of an engineer who wishes to model precisely the vibrations of a real life object. In actual fact the questions I work on are more closely related to mathematics arising in quantum physics and string theory. In addition, I don’t always study the Laplacian, but also the Eigen values of other operators, which might represent other physical quantities than the frequencies of vibration. I mostly study spectral geometry for nice smooth objects such as spheres and tori, but some people work on rough objects and even discrete objects like graphs.

Latest research works.
In the last eight years, I have worked mostly on the spectral zeta function, which is an infinite sum of powers of the Eigen values. In particular, I have worked on the zeta-regularised determinant, which is used in topology, quantum field theory, and string theory. Recently, I have been very interested in the sum of squares of the wavelength of a surface, which is related to all kinds of different things including vortex theory.





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Very impressive. Sloan genius grant especially.

^^^ She's one of the product of Awolowo's free education.

I'm proud of her.

Ileke-IdI:

^^^ She's one of the product of Awolowo's free education.

Hmm before the days of Blackberry babes and desperate aristorism

Free education is a beautiful thing. Btw, I am also one of the products of Awo's free education program. At least I think my paternal family benefited from it.

Ileke-IdI:

^^^ She's one of the product of Awolowo's free education.

She was not a product of the Nigerian school system, let alone a product of Awo's free education.


She schooled in London. get your facts right, Ms. Expert on everything Nigeria.

premechaz:



She was not a product of the Nigerian school system, let alone a product of Awo's free education.


She schooled in London. get your facts right, Ms. Expert on everything Nigeria.

Very disgusting claim. Somebody who never studied 1 minute in Nigeria. Rubbish

Ọmọ this na brain and money talking

She maybe Black and have roots in Nigeria,but that doesn't change the fact,She is a full bred Briton. If she was in Nigeria quota system wouldn't let her progress.