Post by When Females Lead

Meet Kathleen Okikiolu, she is a renowned British mathematician. Born into a mathematical family, Okikiolu first studied Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, before moving to the University of California to complete her PhD on the analogue of the strong Szego limit theorem on 2- and 3-dimensional spheres. She also resolved Peter Jones’ conjecture on a continuous version of the travelling salesman problem. In 1997, she became the first Black person to win a Sloan Research Fellowship, the most prestigious prize for young mathematicians in the US. Another Black Scientist you should know is Maggie Aderin-Pocock, she is a British space scientist and science communicator. Born in London in 1968, Aderin-Pocock completed her undergraduate degree in Physics and her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London. She then spent 3 years working for the UK Ministry of Defence, before going back to academia, where she worked on a high-resolution spectrograph for the Geminin telescope in Chile. Throughout her career, Aderin-Pocock has been passionate about outreach and science communication. She has presented numerous BBC TV programs, including In Orbit and The Sky at Night.