An Irish-American mathematician and daughter of one of Ireland's greatest mathematicians has won a US National Medal of Science. Prof Cathleen Synge Morawetz is the first woman to receive the National Medal for mathematics.
She is a professor emeritus at New York University and is also the chairwoman of the governing board of the School of Theoretical Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Her contribution to mathematics was described as "absolutely outstanding" by Prof John T. Lewis, director of the School of Theoretical Physics.
Her principal contribution has been research on partial differential equations, which has been particularly influential on engineers' efforts to design aircraft wings which minimise the impact of shock waves.
She proved in the late 1950s that shock waves were inevitable if an aircraft moved fast enough, no matter how they were designed. This changed the engineering design emphasis from eliminating to minimising shock waves.
She also made fundamental contributions to the mathematical theory of scattering, which describes how waves interact with obstacles. It provides the mathematics necessary for analysing remote sensing data from ultrasound and radar.
The award is considered the US equivalent of the Nobel Prize and marks out a truly remarkable contribution. She served as president of the American Mathematical Society from 1995 to 1997.
Her father, Prof J.L. Synge, ranks as "probably the greatest Irish mathematician of the century", according to Prof Lewis. A nephew of playwright John Millington Synge, he was a Trinity scholar. He made his name in Canada, set up the school of mathematics at Pittsburg's Carnegie Mellon University and returned to work at the Dublin Institute, where he published papers on relativity. He died in 1995 aged 98.
Prof Cathleen Synge Morawetz was born in 1923. She was educated in Canada and in 1946 joined researchers at NYU. She also has degrees from MIT and has published papers in mathematics and mathematical physics. She holds both Irish and US passports so both countries can lay claim to this remarkable woman.