Born: 1 July 1917, United States
Died: 27 September 2014
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Dorothy Maharam Stone
The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.
In 1942, Dorothy Maharam submitted her influential paper “On Homogeneous Measure Algebras” to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America to be printed in March. The article presented what is now known as Maharam’s theorem on the decomposability of complete measure spaces.
Dorothy Maharam Stone (July 1, 1917 – September 27, 2014) was a renowned Jewish-American mathematician from Parkersburg, West Virginia. She made significant contributions to mathematics, particularly in measure theory, with her work leading to the creation of Maharam’s theorem and Maharam algebra, both named in her honor
Maharam earned her B.S. from Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1937 and completed her Ph.D. at Bryn Mawr College in 1940 under Anna Johnson Pell Wheeler. Her “On Measure in Abstract Sets” dissertation showcased her early prowess.
Throughout her career, she conducted pioneering research on finitely additive measures on integers and contributed significantly to the theory of Banach spaces. Her influential papers, published in prestigious journals, highlighted her expertise.
Dorothy Maharam Stone and her husband, Arthur Harold Stone, both lectured at various universities in the U.S. and the U.K. and served as faculty members at the University of Rochester. Her outstanding contributions led to her recognition as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1976.