Martha Bettina Richmond (née Zoeller, January 30, 1958 – November 22, 2009) was a German-American mathematician, mathematics textbook author, professor at Western Kentucky University, and murder victim.
Life
Richmond was born in Dresden on January 30, 1958,[1] earned a vordiplom (the German equivalent of a bachelor's degree) from the University of Würzburg,[E] and completed her Ph.D. at Florida State University in 1985.[2] Her doctoral dissertation, Freeness of Hopf algebras over grouplike subalgebras, was supervised by Warren Nichols, a student of Irving Kaplansky.[3]
She became a professor at Western Kentucky University, teaching there for 23 years.[2] Topics in her mathematical research included abstract algebra, transformation semigroups, ring theory, and Hopf algebra,[A][B] including the proof of the Nichols–Zoeller freeness theorem in Hopf algebra.[A][4] With her husband, Thomas Richmond, she was the author of a mathematics textbook, A Discrete Transition to Advanced Mathematics.[C] She also published works in recreational mathematics.[D][E]
Murder
Richmond was stabbed to death on November 22, 2009, in the parking lot of a racquetball facility in downtown Bowling Green, Kentucky. According to the FBI, her murder was likely an opportunistic crime motivated by armed robbery.[5] At the time of her death, she had been on leave from her faculty position to assist her father in Germany. The murder is still unsolved.[6]
Selected publications
| A. | Nichols, Warren D.; Zoeller, M. Bettina (1989), "A Hopf algebra freeness theorem", American Journal of Mathematics, 111 (2): 381–385, doi:10.2307/2374514, MR 0987762 |
| B. | Nichols, Warren D.; Richmond, M. Bettina (1996), "The Grothendieck group of a Hopf algebra", Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra, 106 (3): 297–306, doi:10.1016/0022-4049(95)00023-2, MR 1375826 |
| C. | Richmond, Bettina; Richmond, Thomas (2004), A Discrete Transition To Advanced Mathematics, Thomson/Brooks/Cole; reprinted by American Mathematical Society, Pure and Applied Undergraduate Texts 3, 2009; 2nd ed., Pure and Applied Undergraduate Texts 63, 2023[7] |
| D. | Richmond, Bettina; Richmond, Tom (December 2009), "How to recognize a parabola", The American Mathematical Monthly, 116 (10): 910–922, doi:10.4169/000298909x477023 |
| E. | Richmond, Bettina (November 2010), "On a perplexing polynomial puzzle" (PDF), The College Mathematics Journal, 41 (5): 400–403, doi:10.4169/074683410x522017 |
References
- ↑ "Bettina Richmond", Bowling Green Daily News, 25 November 2009, retrieved 2023-10-14
- 1 2 In memory 2008–2009, American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2023-10-14
- ↑ Martha Bettina Zoeller at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ↑ Scharfschwerdt, Boris (2001), "The Nichols Zoeller theorem for Hopf algebras in the category of Yetter Drinfeld modules", Communications in Algebra, 29 (6): 2481–2487, doi:10.1081/AGB-100002402, MR 1845124
- ↑ Highland, Deborah (23 November 2011), "Family of slain WKU professor, police continue to look for clues about 2009 stabbing death", Kentucky New Era
- ↑ Story, Justin (22 November 2016), "Seven years later, Richmond's death remains unsolved", Bowling Green Daily News, retrieved 2023-10-14
- ↑ Rogovchenko, Yuri V., "Review of A Discrete Transition To Advanced Mathematics (2009 ed.)", zbMATH, Zbl 1227.00028