Ruth Silverman

{{short description|American mathematician}}

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| name = Ruth Silverman

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| birth_place = 1936 or 1937

| death_date = {{death date|2011|4|25}}, age 74

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| alma_mater = University of Washington

| thesis_title = Decomposition of plane convex sets

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| discipline = Mathematics

| sub_discipline = computational geometry

| workplaces = New Jersey Institute of Technology,
Southern Connecticut State College,
University of the District of Columbia,
University of Maryland, College Park

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Ruth Silverman (born 1936 or 1937, died April 25, 2011){{r|wapo}} was an American mathematician and computer scientist known for her research in computational geometry. She was one of the original founders of the Association for Women in Mathematics in 1971.{{r|awm|change}}

Education and career

Silverman completed a Ph.D. in 1970 at the University of Washington.{{r|diss}}

She was a faculty member at the New Jersey Institute of Technology,

an associate professor at Southern Connecticut State College,{{r|scsc}} a computer science instructor at the University of the District of Columbia, and a researcher in the Center for Automation Research at the University of Maryland, College Park.{{r|wapo}}

Contributions

Silverman's dissertation, Decomposition of plane convex sets,{{r|diss}} concerned the characterization of compact convex sets in the Euclidean plane that cannot be formed as Minkowski sums of simpler sets.{{r|schneider}}

She became known for her research in computational geometry and particular for highly cited publications on k-means clustering{{ran|KM}} and nearest neighbor search.{{ran|NN}} Other topics in Silverman's research include robust statistics{{ran|LT}} and small sets of points that meet every line in finite projective planes.{{ran|IP}}

Selected publications

{{rma|IP|{{citation

| last1 = Erdős | first1 = P. | author1-link = Paul Erdős

| last2 = Silverman | first2 = R.

| last3 = Stein | first3 = A.

| journal = Ars Combinatoria

| mr = 706303

| pages = 247–259

| title = Intersection properties of families containing sets of nearly the same size

| volume = 15

| year = 1983}}

|tw=2em}}

{{rma|NN|{{citation

| last1 = Arya | first1 = Sunil

| last2 = Mount | first2 = David M. | author2-link = David Mount

| last3 = Netanyahu | first3 = Nathan S. | author3-link = Nathan Netanyahu

| last4 = Silverman | first4 = Ruth

| last5 = Wu | first5 = Angela Y. | author5-link = Angela Y. Wu

| doi = 10.1145/293347.293348

| issue = 6

| journal = Journal of the ACM

| mr = 1678846

| pages = 891–923

| title = An optimal algorithm for approximate nearest neighbor searching in fixed dimensions

| volume = 45

| year = 1998| s2cid = 8193729

| doi-access = free

}}

|tw=2em}}

{{rma|KM|{{citation

| last1 = Kanungo | first1 = T.

| last2 = Mount | first2 = D. M. | author2-link = David Mount

| last3 = Netanyahu | first3 = N. S. | author3-link = Nathan Netanyahu

| last4 = Piatko | first4 = C. D. | author4-link = Christine Piatko

| last5 = Silverman | first5 = R.

| last6 = Wu | first6 = A. Y. | author6-link = Angela Y. Wu

| doi = 10.1109/tpami.2002.1017616

| issue = 7

| journal = IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence

| pages = 881–892

| title = An efficient k-means clustering algorithm: analysis and implementation

| volume = 24

| year = 2002}}

|tw=2em}}

{{rma|LT|{{citation

| last1 = Mount | first1 = David M. | author1-link = David Mount

| last2 = Netanyahu | first2 = Nathan S. | author2-link = Nathan Netanyahu

| last3 = Piatko | first3 = Christine D.

| last4 = Silverman | first4 = Ruth

| last5 = Wu | first5 = Angela Y.

| doi = 10.1007/s00453-012-9721-8

| issue = 1

| journal = Algorithmica

| mr = 3172284

| pages = 148–183

| title = On the least trimmed squares estimator

| volume = 69

| year = 2014| s2cid = 6796756 }}

|tw=2em}}

References

{{reflist|refs=

{{citation|title=A Brief History of the Association for Women in Mathematics: The Presidents' Perspectives|first=Lenore|last=Blum|author-link=Lenore Blum|journal=Notices of the American Mathematical Society|volume=38|issue=7|date=September 1991|pages=738–774|url=http://www.awm-math.org/articles/notices/199107/blum/index.html|access-date=2018-02-12|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170729084943/http://www.awm-math.org/articles/notices/199107/blum/index.html|archive-date=2017-07-29|url-status=dead}}. See section "What we did ... (In the beginning): Atlantic City".

{{citation|title=Change is Possible: Stories of Women and Minorities in Mathematics|first=Patricia C.|last=Kenschaft|author-link=Patricia Clark Kenschaft|publisher=American Mathematical Society|year=2005|isbn=9780821837481|page=131|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FKK9yXRMNy8C&pg=PA131}}

MathSciNet record for Silverman's dissertation: {{MR|2620174}}

{{citation

| last = Schneider | first = Rolf

| edition = 2nd

| isbn = 978-1-107-60101-7

| mr = 3155183

| pages = 168–169

| publisher = Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

| series = Encyclopedia of Mathematics and its Applications

| title = Convex bodies: the Brunn-Minkowski theory

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=VfbXAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA168

| volume = 151

| year = 2014}}

{{citation|title=News and Notices|journal=American Mathematical Monthly|volume=86|issue=5|date=May 1979|pages=418–420|jstor=2321116|doi=10.1080/00029890.1979.11994820}}

{{citation|url=http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/washingtonpost/obituary.aspx?n=ruth-silverman&pid=150618150|title=Ruth Silverman (age 74)|newspaper=Washington Post|department=Paid death notices|date=April 28, 2011}}

}}