Emilie Virginia Haynsworth
1916 - 1985
Her Mathematical Lineage

While working on my master's degree at Auburn University, my work was directed by Dr. Emilie Haynsworth. In addition to her being my mentor, we were also friends of several years' standing, since during my undergraduate years we attended the same church in Auburn. When I returned to graduate school with a keen interest in linear algebra, after serving for three years overseas in the U. S. Army, she was the natural choice to be my major professor. She was about the same age as my mother, and I suppose there was a bit of mathematical motherhood there, as she directed my work to its successful completion.

I recall the time when, during my oral examination, I faltered on one question (“Bruce, explain why all the eigenvalues of a Hermitian matrix are real numbers,”) and she gently gave me the broad memory-inducing hint I needed to correctly answer. I am but a humble mathematical descendent of hers, but her mathematical ability and lineage are first-class.

Emilie was a superb mathematician whose specialty was in the field of matrix theory. Her bibliography of published articles includes more than two dozen items, and many of her later papers appeared in her favorite professional journal, Linear Algebra and its Applications, for which she often served as a referee . Her dissertation and her early work centered on bounds for eigenvalues of matrices, while in her later years she concentrated on cones of matrices (her favorite she called “the ice cream cone”). She is credited with naming the matrix result known as the “Schur Complement,” and she obtained many important matrix results based on its use. She had close personal and professional ties to the lions of linear algebra of her day: Alexander Ostrowski, Helmut Wielandt, Miroslav Fiedler, Marvin Marcus, Vlastimil Ptak, and Olga Taussky-Todd.

This picture was provided by Dr. Richard Brualdi, Department of Mathematics, University of Wisconsin. It's a favorite of his because it shows his doctoral advisor, the late reknowned combinatorialist Herbert Ryser. The picture was taken at the 1980 Auburn Matrix Theory Conference, in front of Auburn's Parker Hall, home of the Department of Mathematics. In the picture, from left to right, are:

 

Herbert Ryser (1923-1985), California Institute of Technology
Hans Schneider, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Emilie Haynsworth (1916-1985), Auburn University
Jim Wall, Auburn University
Robert Thompson (1931-1995), University of California - Santa Barbara
Miroslav Fiedler, Mathematical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

Emilie directed the work of 18 students who earned doctorates. She died in 1985, and her mathematical obituary appears in Volume 75 (1986) of Linear Algebra and its Applications , pages 269-276.

Dr. Haynsworth, a proud native of Sumter in South Carolina, earned her Ph.D at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in the mid-1950s, where her work was directed by Alfred T. Brauer. Dr. Brauer came to the United States in the late 1930s, a displaced Jew from Nazi Germany. He earned his doctorate at the University of Berlin in the late 1920s, and was a student of Issai Schur.

 

 

Issai Schur was another victim of Hitler's terror against the Jews. His position on the faculty at the University of Berlin was terminated by the Nazis in the 1930s, but he was able to flee to Palestine, where he died in 1941. He earned his doctorate in 1901 at the University of Berlin, working under Georg Frobenius.

 

 

Georg Frobenius also earned his doctorate at the University of Berlin, in 1870, where he studied under the great Karl Weierstrass.

 

 

 

The University of Königsberg conferred an honorary doctorate on Karl Weierstrass in 1854 after his many years of study, teaching, and important published results. His chief mentor was Christoph Gudermann in the 1840s.

 

 

Christoph Gudermann (no picture available) was a student of Gauss at the University of Göttingen.

 

Thus, Emilie Haynsworth is among the pantheon of mathematicians with doctorates whose mathematical lineage links directly back to “The Prince of Mathematics,” Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss.