Carol Lee Walker (born 1935) is a retired American mathematician and mathematics textbook author. Walker's early mathematical research, in the 1960s and 1970s, concerned the theory of abelian groups. In the 1990s, her interests shifted to fuzzy logic and fuzzy control systems.[1]

Education and career

Walker was born in Martinez, California on August 19, 1935, and went to high school in Montrose, Colorado. She studied music education at the University of Colorado Boulder, with a year off to work as a primary-school music teacher in Colorado, and graduated in 1957. Next, she went to the University of Denver for graduate study in mathematics, but after one year transferred to New Mexico State University,[2] where she earned a master's degree in 1961 and completed her PhD in 1963.[1] Her dissertation, On -pure sequences of abelian groups, was supervised by David Kent Harrison.[2][3]

After postdoctoral research at the Institute for Advanced Study, she returned to Mexico State University as an assistant professor in 1964, and quickly earned tenure as an associate professor in 1966. She was promoted to full professor in 1972. She chaired the Department of Mathematical Sciences from 1979 to 1993, and served as associate dean of arts and sciences from 1993 until her retirement in 1996.[1]

Books

Walker is the coauthor of books including:[1]

  • Mathematics for the Liberal Arts Student (with Fred Richman and Robert J. Wisner, Brooks-Cole, 1967; 2nd ed., 1973; 3rd ed., with James Brewer, Prentice-Hall, 2000; 4th ed., 2003)[4]
  • Doing Mathematics with Scientific WorkPlace (with Darel Hardy, Brooks-Cole, 1995; multiple editions)
  • A First Course in Fuzzy and Neural Control (with Hung T. Nguyen, Radipuram Prasad, and Elbert Walker, CRC Press, 2003)[5]
  • Applied Algebra: Codes, Ciphers, and Discrete Algorithms (with Darel Hardy, Prentice-Hall, 2003)[6]
  • Calculus: Understanding Its Concepts and Methods (with Darel Hardy, Fred Richman, and Robert J. Wisner, MacKichan Software, 2006)

Recognition

The New Mexico State University alumni gave Walker their Distinguished Alumni Award in 2001.[7]

Personal life

Walker was married to Elbert Walker (1930–2018), another mathematician who joined the New Mexico State University faculty in 1957.[8]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Carol L. Walker, Department of Mathematical Sciences, New Mexico State University, retrieved 2022-12-31
  2. 1 2 Walker, Carol Lee (1963), On -pure sequences of abelian groups, New Mexico State University, MR 2613806, ProQuest 302094114
  3. ↑ Carol Walker at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. ↑ Reviews of Mathematics for the Liberal Arts Student:
    • Dimsdale, J. M. (May 1974), Mathematics Magazine, 47 (3): 163, doi:10.2307/2689281, JSTOR 2689281{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
    • Skeen, Kenneth C. (December 1973), The Mathematics Teacher, 66 (8): 736, JSTOR 27959508{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
  5. ↑ Reviews of A First Course in Fuzzy and Neural Control:
    • Naidu, D. Subbaram (March 2004), SIAM Review, 46 (1): 176–179, JSTOR 20453492{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
    • Pedrycz, Witold, zbMATH, Zbl 1036.93038{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
  6. ↑ Reviews of Applied Algebra:
    • Ayuso, Juan Tena, zbMATH, Zbl 1158.94002{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
    • Gutin, G. (June 2010), The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 61 (6): 1065–1066, JSTOR 40608282{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
    • Karaali, Gizem (January 2010), "Review", MAA Reviews
    • Xie, Yulai (August 2012), ACM SIGACT News, 43 (3): 25–27, doi:10.1145/2421096.2421101{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
  7. ↑ Historical Record of Distinguished Alumni Award Recipients, NM State Alumni, retrieved 2022-12-31
  8. ↑ "Dr. Elbert A. Walker, 1930–2018", Las Cruces Sun-News, February 13, 2018 – via Legacy.com
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