Doris Fischer-Colbrie

{{short description|US ceramic artist and former mathematician}}

Doris Helga Fischer-Colbrie (born in 1949){{MacTutor Biography|id=Schoen|title=Richard Melvin Schoen}}[https://www.ias.edu/scholars/doris-helga-fischer-colbrie Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), past member: Doris Helga Fischer-Colbrie] is a ceramic artist and former mathematician.{{Cite web|url=https://dorisfischer-colbrie.com/home.html|title=Doris Fischer-Colbrie|website=dorisfischer-colbrie.com}} She received her Ph.D. in mathematics in 1978 from University of California at Berkeley, where her advisor was H. Blaine Lawson.{{MathGenealogy|id=32070}}

Many of her contributions to the theory of minimal surfaces are now considered foundational to the field. In particular, her collaboration with Richard Schoen is a landmark contribution to the interaction of stable minimal surfaces with nonnegative scalar curvature.Li, Peter. Geometric analysis. Cambridge Studies in Advanced Mathematics, 134. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012. x+406 pp. {{ISBN|978-1-107-02064-1}} A particular result, also obtained by Manfredo do Carmo and Chiakuei Peng, is that the only complete stable minimal surfaces in {{math|ℝ³}} are planes.do Carmo, M.; Peng, C. K. Stable complete minimal surfaces in {{math|ℝ³}} are flat planes. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 1 (1979), no. 6, 903–906. Her work on unstable minimal surfaces gave the basic tools by which to relate the assumption of finite index to conditions on stable subdomains and total curvature.Meeks, William H., III; Pérez, Joaquín The classical theory of minimal surfaces. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 48 (2011), no. 3, 325–407.Meeks, William H., III; Pérez, Joaquín. A survey on classical minimal surface theory. University Lecture Series, 60. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 2012. x+182 pp. {{ISBN|978-0-8218-6912-3}}

After positions at Columbia University and San Diego State University, Fischer-Colbrie left academia to become a ceramic artist. She is married to Schoen, with whom she has two children."[https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201811/rnoti-p1349.pdf The mathematics of Richard Schoen]". Notices Amer. Math. Soc. 65 (2018), no. 11, 1349–1376.