| Sylvia Margaret Wiegand | |
| Birth Date: | 8 March 1945 |
| Birth Place: | Cape Town, South Africa |
| Fields: | Commutative algebra math education, history of math |
| Alma Mater: | University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| Thesis Title: | Galois Theory of Essential Expansions of Modules and Vanishing Tensor Powers |
| Thesis Year: | 1972 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Lawrence S. Levy |
| Doctoral Students: | Christina Eubanks-Turner |
Sylvia Margaret Wiegand (born March 8, 1945) is an American mathematician.[1]
Wiegand was born in Cape Town, South Africa. She is the daughter of mathematician Laurence Chisholm Young and through him the grand-daughter of mathematicians Grace Chisholm Young and William Henry Young.[2] Her family moved to Wisconsin in 1949, and she graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1966 after three years of study.[1] In 1971 Wiegand earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her dissertation was titled Galois Theory of Essential Expansions of Modules and Vanishing Tensor Powers.
In 1987, she was named full professor at the University of Nebraska; at the time Wiegand was the only female professor in the department. In 1988 Sylvia headed a search committee for two new jobs in the math department, for which two women were hired, although one stayed only a year and another left after four years.[3] In 1996 Sylvia and her husband, Roger Wiegand, established a fellowship for graduate student research at the university in honor of Sylvia's grandparents.[4]
From 1997 until 2000, Wiegand was president of the Association for Women in Mathematics.[5] [6]
Wiegand has been an editor for Communications in Algebra and the Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics.[2] She was on the board of directors of the Canadian Mathematical Society from 1997 to 2000.[2]
Wiegand was an American Mathematical Society (AMS) Council member at large.[7]
Wiegand is featured in the book Notable Women in Mathematics: A Biographical Dictionary, edited by Charlene Morrow and Teri Perl, published in 1998.[1] For her work in improving the status of women in mathematics, she was awarded the University of Nebraska's Outstanding Contribution to the Status of Women Award in 2000.[3] In May 2005, the University of Nebraska hosted the Nebraska Commutative Algebra Conference: WiegandFest "in celebration of the many important contributions of Sylvia and her husband Roger Wiegand."[1]
In 2012 she became a fellow of the AMS.[8]
In 2017, she was selected as a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics in the inaugural class.[9]