Julia Robinson
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Julia Hall Bowman Robinson (December 8, 1919 – July 30, 1985) was an American mathematician, born in St. Louis, Missouri. After spending several years at San Diego State College (now San Diego State University), she transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where she completed her undergraduate and graduate degrees. In 1976, Robinson was elected as the first female member of the mathematical division of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition, she was the first woman president of the American Mathematical Society. She died in Oakland, California of leukemia at the age of 65.
She is best known for her work on Diophantine equations and decidability which provided much of the ground work for the negative solution of Hilbert's tenth problem by Yuri Matiyasevich. In fact Robinson only strayed from this topic twice. The first was her thesis on effective solvability and unsolvability of mathematical problems. The second was in game theory where she proved that the fictitious play dynamics converges to the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium in two player zero sum games.
Her older sister, Constance Reid, is a well-known mathematical biographer.
Further reading
External links
- [National Academy of Science Biographical Memoir] written by Solomon Feferman
- John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson. [] at the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
- [] at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- [GameTheory.net blurb on Robinson]
- [Julia Bowman ROBINSON on the Internet] ([mirror])
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