And Most of All...

I fear being brilliant and noticeably different. Being resented by my peers and mistrusted by those in authority. I am afraid that I will fail not because I am incapable, but because I grow weary of eternally fighting to prove my worth.

Nerves

I got in to my first choice of colleges, and I'm even going to be able to afford the tuition. Enrollment deposit has been sent, I'm registered for orientation, and I've been busily calling and emailing about apartments. This is an incredible opportunity for me...

It's also completely terrifying.

The thing is, I tend to have a huge case of Impostor Syndrome even in the best of situations. I routinely score in the 99th percentile on standardized tests, but so what - those tests are generally biased and don't say much about actual intelligence. All that means is that I'm good at taking standardized tests. It doesn't matter that I am at the top of the class in what are generally considered the hardest courses available. I can still tell myself that because those courses are offered at a community college they are easier than they would be at a four year school. I've been known to self-sabotage in ways that prevent me from being as intellectually challenged as I could be (that's how I ended up at the community college in the first place) because I'm incredibly afraid that my lifetime's worth of experience is false, that really I am at best average and if I try for anything more I will fail.

So I got into one of the best technical universities in the United States, a "New Ivy" according to whoever it is that makes up that kind of distinction. I'm not a traditional aged student - not too far off, but enough that I will stand out in classrooms full of 18-20 year olds. I'm female, going to a school that is about 70% male. I'm queer, and unapologetically feminist. And I know that for a woman to successfully travel the path I want in life she must be exceptional. I am horribly afraid that I am not.

I also fear that I am.

Ada Lovelace Day

Balancing family and work has always seemed to me to be one of the greatest (though by no means only) challenges facing women in mathematics.  So for my Ada Lovelace Day Biography I chose a woman who has managed to do just that, and do it well.  Ingrid Daubechies is a mother, a wife, and pioneer in the field of applied mathematics.  She is, in my opinion, an inspiration to women looking to pursue careers in the field of Mathematics.

Born in Belgium, Ingrid Daubechies earned her Ph.D. in Physics from the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels in 1980.  In 1984 she was awarded the Louis Empain Prize for Physics, which is given out once every five years to an outstanding Belgian scientist for work done under the age of 29.  Daubechies moved to the United States in 1987, the same year she developed one of the most common wavelets used in image compression.  She worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories until 1994, when she received the American Mathematical Society’s Steele Prize for Exposition for her book Ten Lectures on Wavelets.  

In 1993 she became the first female full professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, where she is still active in the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics.  In 1997 she was awarded the AMS Ruth Lyttle Satter prize, granted biannually to women in Mathematics, she was also elected to the US National Academy of Arts and Sciences that year.  In 2000 Daubechies became the first woman to receive the National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics, presented every 4 years for excellence in published mathematical research, for her "fundamental discoveries on wavelets and wavelet expansions and for her role in making wavelets methods a practical basic tool of applied mathematics."  

The Pioneer Prize from the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics was awarded jointly to Ingrid Daubechies and Heinz Engl in 2006.  The wavelets she developed have “found widespread use in image processing and time frequency analysis,” and are now standard in data compression.  In addition to her brilliant work as a mathematician and scientist, Daubechies has been happily married since 1987 to her husband Robert Calderbank, also a mathematician, and is the devoted mother of two children.

References

1. What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Vol 2. (1994), p23.

2. Von Baeyer, Christian. "Wave of the future," Discover, May 1995, 68-74.

3. Kort, Edith. "Ingrid Daubechies," Notable Women in Mathematics: A Biographical Dictionary, Charlene Morrow and Teri Perl, Editors, Greenwood Press, 1998, 34-38.

4. Ingrid Daubechies' Personal Biography

5. Daubechies, Ingrid. "Thought Problems," an autobiographical essay in Complexities: Women in Mathematics, Bettye Anne Case and Anne Leggett, Editors, Princeton University Press (2005), 358-361.

6. Haunsperger, Deanna and Stephen Kennedy. "Coal Miner's Daughter," Math Horizons, Mathematical Assocation of America, April 2000, 5-9 and 28-30.

7. "Ingrid Daubechies Receives NAS Award in Mathematics," Notices of the American Mathematical Society, May 2000, p571.

8.  Mathematics Genealogy Project

9.  Biography at the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive