Elaine Cohen
{{short description|American mathematician}}
{{about||the American graphic designer, artist and archivist|Elaine Lustig Cohen}}
Elaine Cohen is an American researcher in geometric modeling and computer graphics, known for her pioneering research on B-splines.{{r|ba}} She is a professor in the school of computing at the University of Utah.{{r|profile}}
Education and career
Cohen graduated from Vassar College in 1968, with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. She went to Syracuse University for graduate study in mathematics, earning a master's degree in 1970 and completing her doctorate in 1974.{{r|educ}}
Her dissertation, On the Degree of Approximation of a Function by Partial Sums of its Fourier Series, concerned approximation theory, and was supervised by Daniel Waterman.{{r|mgp}}
At the University of Utah, Cohen became the first woman to gain tenure at the School of Engineering.{{r|ywca}}
Contributions
With Richard F. Riesenfeld and Gershon Elber, Cohen is the author of the book Geometric Modeling with Splines: An Introduction (AK Peters, 2001).{{r|gms}}
She has also contributed to the development of the Utah teapot, improving it from a two-dimensional surface with no thickness to a bona-fide three-dimensional object.{{r|teapot}}
Recognition
In 2005, the YWCA of Salt Lake City gave Cohen their Outstanding Achievement Award.{{r|ywca}}
In 2009, Cohen and Riesenfeld were awarded the Pierre Bézier Award of the Solid Modeling Association for their work on B-splines in computer aided geometric design.{{r|ba}}
References
{{reflist|refs=
Reviews of Geometric Modeling with Splines:
- {{citation|first=Marshall|last=Walker|title=none|year=2002|journal=Mathematical Reviews|mr=1845683}}
- {{citation|last=Bletzinger|first=K.-U.|date=December 2002|doi=10.1007/s00158-002-0260-9|issue=6|journal=Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization|pages=464–465|title=none|volume=24|s2cid=120598791}}
- {{citation|first=A.|last=Bultheel|author-link=Adhemar Bultheel|title=Review|url=https://people.cs.kuleuven.be/~adhemar.bultheel/WWW/BMS/r194.php|journal=Bulletin of the Belgian Mathematical Society|volume=10|issue=1|page=159|year=2003}}
- {{citation|last=Peters|first=J|date=October 2003|doi=10.1016/s0010-4485(03)00096-4|issue=12|journal=Computer-Aided Design|page=1144|title=Splines with pictures and proofs|volume=35}}
{{citation|url=http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=4660789&itype=CMSID|title=Whatever happened to ... the ubiquitous digital 'Utah teapot'?|newspaper=Salt Lake Tribune|first=Matthew|last=Piper|date=December 5, 2016}}
{{citation|url=https://www.deseretnews.com/article/605153736/YWCA-to-honor-6-Utah-women.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181028104033/https://www.deseretnews.com/article/605153736/YWCA-to-honor-6-Utah-women.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=October 28, 2018|newspaper=Deseret News|date=September 11, 2005|title=YWCA to honor 6 Utah women: Award recipients are hailed for excellence, beating challenges}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cohen, Elaine}}
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
Category:American computer scientists
Category:American women computer scientists
Category:20th-century American mathematicians
Category:21st-century American mathematicians
Category:21st-century American women mathematicians
Category:Vassar College alumni
Category:Syracuse University alumni
Category:University of Utah faculty