Sylvia T. Bozeman

2000

Born: 1947

Birthplace: Camp Hill, Alabama

B.S. in Mathematics Alabama A&M (1968); M.S. in Mathematics Vanderbilt University (1970).

Ph.D. in Mathematics Emory University (1980)
thesis: Representations of Generalized Inverses of Fredholm Operators; advisor: Luis Kramarz

Sylvia Bozeman is Professor of Mathematics and Director of the Center for Scientific Applications of Mathematics (CSAM) at Spelman College.
email: sbozeman@spelman.edu OR sbozeman@etta.auc.edu

Although Sylvia Trimble's father worked with numbers daily in his profession as an insurance agent, it was her mother, a housewife, who first cultivated Sylvia's love for mathematics. Her high school mathematics teacher Mr. Frank Holley, further cultivated her interest. He came back after school and taught trigonometry (a course not offered in the curriculum) to her and a group of committed students. Sylvia Trimble met her husband Robert Bozeman in college at the Historically Black institution Alabama Agricultural & Mechanical College where she earned her B.S. in Mathematics (1968) Sylvia Trimble Bozeman earned her M.S. in Mathematics from Vanderbilt University (1970), and her Ph.D. from Emory University (1980). Dr. Bozeman has taught at Atlanta University, Tennessee State and, beginning in 1974), at Spelman College where she is currently Professor of Mathematics. At Spelman she has also been a Vice Provost.

Sylvia Trimble went through the segregated public schools of her home town. She has said that her parents had high educational values and instilled in her the feeling "I could do anything I wanted to do." When she began her graduate work at Vanderbilt and with white students for the first time, she found she could easily compete in topolgy where the white students had no training, buthad difficulties with topics which required Linear algebra which was not included in her undergraduate training, but she taught it to herself while studying other courses. Though she entered her doctorate having two young children, her most ardent supporter was Robert Bozeman, her husband who also has a Ph. D. in Mathematics.

Some Dr. Bozeman's awards are Distinguished Alumni of the Year Award - Al A&M Univ/NAFEO (1996); Pres. Fac. Award for Dist. Service - Spelman (1995); Dist. Teaching Award - Southeastern Section of the MAA(1995); White House Initiative Fac. Award for Excell. in Sc. & Tech. (1988); Tenneco UNCF Award for Excell. in Teaching (1988) and election to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1997, Sylvia Bozeman became the first African-American to be elected a Section Governor (Southereastern) in MAA's eight-two year history. The MAA is the largest mathematics organization of college and university professors, and the Southeastern Section is one of the largest sections.

  1. Sylvia Trimble Bozeman; Luis Kramarz Finite rank modifications and generalized inverses of Fredholm operators , J. Math. Anal. Appl. 80 (1981), 523--532. 47A53 (45L10)
  2. Sylvia Trimble Bozeman; Luis Kramarz Approximating eigenfunctions of Fredholm operators in Banach spaces , J. Math. Anal. Appl. 105 (1985), 433--444. 47A53 (47G05)
  3. Sylvia Trimble Bozeman; Benjamin J. Martin; Cylindrical Object Identification Using Range Data . Proceedings of the NADA HBCU Conference
  4. Black Women Mathematicians: In Short Supply , SAGE Vol V1, N2, (Fall 1989)

References: Black Women in Mathematics in the United States; J. L. Houston; Math. Reviews

SUMMA Sylvia Bozeman web page http://www.maa.org/summa/archive/s_bozema.htm

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