1906-1995

Austrian-American Mathematician

The two principal areas of interest to Olga Taussky-Todd, in a long and varied career, were number theory and matrix theory. The former is the study of integers and their relationships; the latter concerns the study of sets of elements in a rectangular array, which are subject to operations such as addition or multiplication according to specified rules. Like Emmy Noether (1882-1935), whom she knew, Taussky-Todd was a Jewish woman attempting to gain acceptance in the early twentieth-century world of German mathematics; yet her story was a much happier one than Noether's. Not only was Noether 24 years older than she, and thus practically of a different generation with fewer opportunities for women, but Taussky-Todd quickly left the world of Germany and Austria behind when the Nazis took power.

The second of Julius and Ida Pollach Taussky's three daughters was born on August 30, 1906, in...