Celebrating exceptional teaching at UNCA
past, present, and future.

2008 Parsons Lecturer - Dr. Mary Lou Zeeman

Dr. Zeeman is the R Wells Johnson Professor of Mathematics at Bowdoin College and also works in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University. She is a renowned educator, researcher and speaker who has received numerous awards for teaching, authored and co-authored dozens of papers and presented at many conferences and colloquia. Prof. Zeeman joined the Bowdoin faculty in 2006. Her current research interweaves biological experiment with mathematical modeling, and she collaborates closely with students and faculty from both disciplines to strengthen interdisciplinary connections between the two curricula.

In the fall semester of 2007 she began offering a new introductory biomathematics course, in which biological questions about population growth, species interactions, disease epidemics, genetics, blood glucose levels and hormone pulsatility drive the study of mathematical methods including discrete and continuous models of change over time, equilibrium and oscillatory solutions, and methods for analyzing stability.

"This work is really accessible to undergraduates," Zeeman has said. "Because the field is so new, there are plenty of experiments to do that translate between the biology and the math. I am hoping to interest both biology and math majors and get them working together."

Zeeman is also involved in several initiatives to help each of us focus on the needs of the planet. At Cornell, she helped to develop and launch a highly interdisciplinary course called The State of the Planet with the theme, Whatever your talent, whatever your passion, you can use them to help the planet.

At the 2008 joint meeting of the three major American mathematical societies, she helped to organize minisymposia in which mathematicians, climate scientists, economists and policy makers came together to discuss a development path for integrated models of climate change and economics. She is jointly organizing a summer school on mathematical challenges in climate modeling for junior researchers, and she was recently elected chair of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Activity Group on Dynamical Systems.

Mary Lou Zeeman was born in the United States and raised in the United Kingdom. After completing her undergraduate degree at Oxford University in 1984, she returned to the U.S. for doctoral studies at the University of California–Berkeley. She came to Bowdoin from the University of Texas–San Antonio, where she was Professor of Mathematics and Biology.

She currently divides her time between the Department of Mathematics at Bowdoin and the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University, where she holds a visiting professorship.