Jenny Harrison

Harrison grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. On graduating from the University of Alabama, she won a Marshall Scholarship which she used to fund her graduate studies at the University of Warwick.{{cite journal | url=https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.261.5119.286 | doi=10.1126/science.261.5119.286 | title=Jenny Harrison Finally Gets Tenure in Math at Berkeley | date=1993 | last1=Selvin | first1=Paul | journal=Science | volume=261 | issue=5119 | page=286 | pmid=17836828 | bibcode=1993Sci...261..286S }} She completed her doctorate there in 1975, supervised by Christopher Zeeman.{{mathgenealogy|id=32887}} Hassler Whitney was her postdoctoral adviser at the Institute for Advanced Study, and she was also one of the Miller Research Fellows at Berkeley. She was on the tenured faculty at the University of Oxford (Somerville College) from 1978 to 1981, before returning to Berkeley as an assistant professor.

In 1986, after being denied tenure, Harrison filed a lawsuit alleging gender discrimination. The case drew national attention within the academic community. A 1993 settlement led to a new review of her research by an independent panel of seven mathematicians and scientists, who unanimously recommended her promotion to full professor.{{cite journal | url=https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.252.5014.1781 | doi=10.1126/science.252.5014.1781 | title=Does the Harrison Case Reveal Sexism in Math? | date=1991 |author1-link=Paul R. Selvin | last1=Selvin | first1=Paul | journal=Science | volume=252 | issue=5014 | pages=1781–1783 | pmid=17753244 | bibcode=1991Sci...252.1781S }}

Harrison specializes in geometric analysis and areas in the intersection of algebra, geometry, and geometric measure theory. She introduced and developed with collaborators a theory of generalized functions called differential chains[http://math.berkeley.edu/~harrison/Publications_files/HarrisonPlateau.pdf] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140407081841/http://math.berkeley.edu/~harrison/Publications_files/HarrisonPlateau.pdf |date=2014-04-07 }} Jenny Harrison, Operator calculus of differential chains and differential forms, to appear in the Journal of Geometric Analysis, arxiv posting January 2011, 89 pagesJ. Harrison and H. Pugh, Topological Aspects of Differential Chains, Journal of Geometric Analysis, 22 (2012), no. 3, 685–690 that unifies an infinitesimal calculus with the classical theory of the smooth continuum, a long outstanding problem. The infinitesimals are constructive and arise from methods of standard analysis, as opposed to the nonstandard analysis of Abraham Robinson. The methods apply equally well to domains such as soap films, fractals, charged particles, and Whitney stratified spaces, placing them on the same footing as smooth submanifolds in the resulting calculus. The results include optimal generalizations and simplifications of the theorems of Stokes, Gauss and Green. She has pioneered applications of differential chains to the calculus of variations, physics, and continuum mechanics. Her solution to Plateau's problem{{cite journal | url=https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12220-012-9337-x | doi=10.1007/s12220-012-9337-x | title=Soap Film Solutions to Plateau's Problem | date=2014 | last1=Harrison | first1=J. | journal=Journal of Geometric Analysis | volume=24 | pages=271–297 | arxiv=1106.5839 }} is the first proof of existence of a solution to a universal Plateau's problem for finitely many boundary curves, taking into account all soap films arising in nature, including nonorientable films with triple junctions, as well as solutions of Jesse Douglas,Jesse Douglas, Solutions of the problem of Plateau, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society 33

(1931), 263–321 Herbert Federer and Wendell Fleming.Herbert Federer and Wendell Fleming, Normal and integral currents, The Annals of Mathematics 72 (1960), no. 3, 458–520

As a graduate student at the University of Warwick, where Zeeman introduced her to Plateau's problem. She found a counterexample to the Seifert conjectureJenny Harrison, $C^2$ counterexamples to the Seifert conjecture. Topology (journal)|Topology, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 249–278, 1988 at Oxford. In a Berkeley seminar in 1983 she proposed the existence of a general theory linking these together, and the theory of differential chains began to evolve. Jenny Harrison and Harrison Pugh proved that the topological vector space of differential chains satisfies a universal property determined by two natural axioms. They used the theory to provide the first universal solution to Plateau's problem, including soap film regularity, building upon Harrison's earlier paper.Jenny Harrison, Journal of Geometric Analysis, January 2013, 24(1):271-297

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• Foundational Questions Institute, research award, 2009
• Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, Miller Professor, 2007
• Rockefeller University, Visiting Research Professor, 1996–97
• Yale University, National Science Foundation, Visiting Scholar, 1989–90
• Oxford University, CUF Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow, Somerville College, 1978–81
• Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, Miller Fellow, 1977–78
• Institute for Advanced Study, Visiting Fellow, Princeton, 1975–76

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• [http://math.berkeley.edu/~harrison/ Jenny Harrison] at University of California, Berkeley
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Category:Living people

Category:20th-century American mathematicians

Category:21st-century American mathematicians

Category:University of Alabama alumni

Category:Alumni of the University of Warwick

Category:Academics of the University of Oxford

Category:University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty

Category:Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford

Category:20th-century American women mathematicians

Category:21st-century American women mathematicians

Category:Year of birth missing (living people)