Rodica Simion
Romanian-American mathematician
Rodica Eugenia Simion (January 18, 1955 – January 7, 2000) was a Romanian-American mathematician. She was the Columbian School Professor of Mathematics at George Washington University . Her research concerned combinatorics : she was a pioneer in the study of permutation patterns , and an expert on noncrossing partitions .
Biography
Simion was one of the top competitors in the Romanian national mathematical olympiads .[ 1] She graduated from the University of Bucharest in 1974, and immigrated to the United States in 1976.[ 2] She did her graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania , earning a Ph.D. in 1981 under the supervision of Herbert Wilf .[ 2] [ 3] After teaching at Southern Illinois University and Bryn Mawr College , she moved to George Washington University in 1987, and became Columbian School Professor in 1997.[ 2]
Recognition
She is included in a deck of playing cards featuring notable women mathematicians published by the Association of Women in Mathematics .[ 4]
Research contributions
Simion's thesis research concerned the concavity and unimodality of certain combinatorially defined sequences,[ 5] and included what Richard P. Stanley calls "a very influential result" that the zeros of certain polynomials are all real.[ 2]
Next, with Frank Schmidt, she was one of the first to study the combinatorics of sets of permutations defined by forbidden patterns ; she found a bijective proof that the stack-sortable permutations and the permutations formed by interleaving two monotonic sequences are equinumerous, and found combinatorial enumerations of many permutation classes .[ 2] [ 5] The "simsun permutations" were named after her and Sheila Sundaram, after their initial studies of these objects;[ 6] [ 7] a simsun permutation is a permutation in which, for all k , the subsequence of the smallest k elements has no three consecutive elements in decreasing order.[ 8]
Simion also did extensive research on noncrossing partitions , and became "perhaps the world's leading authority" on them.[ 2]
Other activities
Simion was the main organizer of an exhibit about mathematics, Beyond Numbers , at the Maryland Science Center , based in part on her earlier experience organizing a similar exhibit at George Washington University.[ 2] [ 9] She was also a leader in George Washington University's annual Summer Program for Women in Mathematics.[ 2]
As well as being a mathematician, Simion was a poet and painter;[ 6] [ 10] her poem "Immigrant Complex" was published in a collection of mathematical poetry in 1979.[ 11]
Selected publications
Simion, Rodica (1984), "A multi-indexed Sturm sequence of polynomials and unimodality of certain combinatorial sequences", Journal of Combinatorial Theory , Series A, 36 (1): 15– 22, doi :10.1016/0097-3165(84)90075-X , MR 0728500 .
Simion, Rodica; Schmidt, Frank W. (1985), "Restricted permutations", European Journal of Combinatorics , 6 (4): 383– 406, doi :10.1016/s0195-6698(85)80052-4 , MR 0829358 .
Simion, Rodica; Ullman, Daniel (1991), "On the structure of the lattice of noncrossing partitions", Discrete Mathematics , 98 (3): 193– 206, doi :10.1016/0012-365X(91)90376-D , MR 1144402 .
Simion, Rodica (2000), "Noncrossing partitions", Discrete Mathematics , 217 (1– 3): 367– 409, doi :10.1016/S0012-365X(99)00273-3 , MR 1766277 .
See also
References
^ Crapanzano, Theresa (January 20, 2000), "GW mourns after math professor passes away" , The GW Hatchet .
^ a b c d e f g h Stanley, Richard P. (2000), "Rodica Simion: January 18, 1955 – January 7, 2000" (PDF) , Pi Mu Epsilon Journal , 11 : 83– 86 .
^ Rodica Simion at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
^ "Mathematicians of EvenQuads Deck 1" , awm-math.org , retrieved 2022-06-18
^ a b Wilf, Herbert (January 2000), Rodica Simion (1955–2000) , Remarks at a special session of an AMS meeting in Washington, D.C. .
^ a b Zeilberger, Doron (January 2000), RODICA SIMION (1955-2000): An (almost) Perfect Enumerator and Human Being .
^ Sundaram, Sheila (2002), "Reminiscences of Rodica Simion", Advances in Applied Mathematics , 28 (3– 4): 285– 286, doi :10.1006/aama.2001.0785 , MR 1899997 .
^ Deutsch, Emeric; Elizalde, Sergi (2012), "Restricted simsun permutations", Annals of Combinatorics , 16 (2): 253– 269, arXiv :0912.1361 , doi :10.1007/s00026-012-0129-6 , MR 2927606 , S2CID 115172092 .
^ Bonin, Joseph E. (2002), "A remembrance of Rodica Simion", Advances in Applied Mathematics , 28 (3– 4): 280– 281, doi :10.1006/aama.2001.0783 , MR 1899995 .
^ Kalai, Gil (January 7, 2000), Rodica Simion: Immigrant Complex , Combinatorics and more .
^ Robson, Ernest M.; Wimp, Jet, eds. (1979), Against infinity: an anthology of contemporary mathematical poetry , Primary Press, pp. 65– 66, ISBN 9780934982016 .
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