Joan Birman

Joan Sylvia Lyttle Birman
Born (1927-05-30) May 30, 1927
NationalityAmerican
Alma materB.A., Barnard College, 1948
Ph.D., Courant Institute (NYU), 1968
Known forBraid theory, knot theory
Awards
  • Chauvenet Prize
  • AAAS member
  • Sloan Fellow
  • Guggenheim Fellow
  • AMS Fellow
  • AWM Fellow
  • National Academy of Sciences member
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsBarnard College, Columbia University, University of Haifa
ThesisBraid Groups and Their Relationship to Mapping Class Groups (1968)
Doctoral advisorWilhelm Magnus
Doctoral students
Websitewww.math.columbia.edu/~jb/

Joan Sylvia Lyttle Birman (born May 30, 1927, in New York City) is an American mathematician, specializing in low-dimensional topology. She has made contributions to the study of knots, 3-manifolds, mapping class groups of surfaces, geometric group theory, contact structures and dynamical systems. Birman is research professor emerita at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she has been since 1973.