International women's day 2012

Plus investigating the mathematics of sound waves.

Today is International Women's Day! Plus is run entirely by women who are happily disregarding maths and gender stereotypes, so we're very pleased to join in the celebrations. We've got lots of content by or about women mathematicians on Plus and here are some of our favourites. (And we'd like to ask all remaining dinosaurs to stop sending us emails starting "Dear Sirs"...)

Some mathematical heroines from the past:

• Ada Lovelace - visions of today
• Florence Nightingale: The compassionate statistician
• Against the odds — an article on Emmy Noether
• Female struggle — introducing four pioneering female mathematicians.

Some present-day mathematical heroines from our careers library:

• Tanya Morton: Application engineering manager, MathWorks
• Helen Joyce: Brazil correspondent, The Economist
• Sandy Black: Fashion designer
• Victoria Gould: Actor and mathematician
• Emily Poskett: Government statistician
• Rupa Patel: Financial engineer
• Claudia Centazzo: Business development manager

Articles by and about mathematical heroines from the present:

• Supergravity to the rescue? Meet Renata Kallosh (you can also listen to this interview as a podcast)
• Colva Roney-Dougal on the power of groups
• Carola Schönlieb on digital image restoration
• Sara Garner on evaluating medical treatments
• Caroline Series on Non-Euclidean geometry and Indra's pearls
• Janna Levin on topology and the Universe
• Carla Farsi on mathematics and art
• Josefina Alvarez on Google's search algorithm
• Joan Lasenby on maths and computer generated movies
• Abigail Kirk on Euler's polyhedron formula

Mathematical heroines of the future!:

• Congratulations to the successful UK team from the Chinese Girl's Mathematical Olympiad
• And good luck to all those entering the inaugural European Girl's Mathematical Olympiad!

And just a few of the other female mathematicians whose work we have enjoyed hearing about (and hope to one day feature on Plus!):

• Irit Dinur, who works on computer science, combinatorics and probabilistically checkable proofs – Dinur's talk was the standout lecture at the ICM 2010
• Dorit Aharovnov, who works on quantum computing – another favourite lecture from the ICM 2010

You can listen to some conversations we've had with female mathematicians about their careers and roles in mathematics (these are podcasts):

• Plus at the International Conference of Women Mathematicians — interviews with female mathematicians from around the world who attended the ICWM in India in 2010.
• European women in mathematics — interviews with delegates of the European Women in Mathematics conference which took place in Cambridge in 2007.

And you can find out more about mathematical heroines past and present at the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive and from Agness Scott College.

Who are your mathematical heroines? Tell us by leaving a comment below!