# Jean Taylor

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For other people, see [Jean Taylor (disambiguation)](/source/Jean_Taylor_(disambiguation)).

**Jean Ellen Taylor[1]** (born 1944)[2] is an American mathematician who is a [professor emerita](/source/Professor_emerita) at [Rutgers University](/source/Rutgers_University)[3] and visiting faculty at the [Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences](/source/Courant_Institute_of_Mathematical_Sciences) of [New York University](/source/New_York_University).[4]

## Biography

Taylor was born in Northern California.[5] She did her undergraduate studies at [Mount Holyoke College](/source/Mount_Holyoke_College), graduating summa cum laude with an A.B. in 1966.[5] She began her graduate studies in chemistry at the [University of California, Berkeley](/source/University_of_California,_Berkeley), but after receiving an M.Sc. she switched to mathematics under the mentorship of [Shiing-Shen Chern](/source/Shiing-Shen_Chern) and then transferred to the [University of Warwick](/source/University_of_Warwick) and received a second M.Sc. in mathematics there. She completed a doctorate in 1973 from [Princeton University](/source/Princeton_University) under the supervision of [Frederick J. Almgren, Jr.](/source/Frederick_J._Almgren,_Jr.)[5][1]

Taylor joined the Rutgers faculty in 1973, and retired in 2002.[5] She was president of the [Association for Women in Mathematics](/source/Association_for_Women_in_Mathematics) from 1999 to 2001.[5][6]

She has been married three times, to mathematicians [John Guckenheimer](/source/John_Guckenheimer) and Frederick Almgren, and to financier and science advocate [William T. Golden](/source/William_T._Golden).[5][7]

## Research

Taylor is known for her work on the mathematics of [soap bubbles](/source/Soap_bubble) and of the growth of [crystals](/source/Crystal). In 1973 she published her dissertation on "Regularity of the Singular Set of Two-Dimensional Area-Minimizing Flat Chains Modulo 3 in R3" which solved a long-standing problem about length and smoothness of soap-film triple function curves.[8] In 1976 she, along with Almgren, published the first proof of [Plateau's laws](/source/Plateau's_laws), a description of the shapes formed by soap bubble clusters that had been formulated without proof in the 19th century by [Joseph Plateau](/source/Joseph_Plateau).[9] Encyclopedia Britannica called the mathematical derivation "one of the major triumphs of global analysis".[10]

## Awards and honors

Taylor is a fellow of the [American Academy of Arts and Sciences](/source/American_Academy_of_Arts_and_Sciences), the [American Association for the Advancement of Science](/source/American_Association_for_the_Advancement_of_Science), the [American Mathematical Society](/source/American_Mathematical_Society),[11] and the [Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics](/source/Society_for_Industrial_and_Applied_Mathematics).[12] In 2001, she received an honorary doctorate from Mount Holyoke College.[5] In 2017, she was selected as a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics in the inaugural class.[13]

## Selected publications

- Taylor, Jean E. (1976), "The structure of singularities in soap-bubble-like and soap-film-like minimal surfaces", *Annals of Mathematics*. **103** (3): 489–539, Second Series, [doi:10.2307/1970949](https://doi.org/10.2307/1970949). [JSTOR 1970949](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1970949). MR 0428181.
- Taylor, J. E.; Cahn, J. W.; Handwerker, C. A. (1992), ["Overview No. 98. I. Geometric models of crystal growth"](https://zenodo.org/record/1258651), *Acta Metallurgica et Materialia*. **40** (7): 1443–1474, [doi:10.1016/0956-7151(92)90090-2](https://doi.org/10.1016/0956-7151(92)90090-2).
- Taylor, J. E. (1992), "Overview No. 98. II. Mean curvature and weighted mean curvature", *Acta Metallurgica et Materialia*. **40** (7): 1475–1485, [doi:10.1016/0956-7151(92)90091-R](https://doi.org/10.1016/0956-7151(92)90091-R).
- Almgren, Fred; Taylor, Jean E.; Wang, Lihe (1993), "Curvature-driven flows: a variational approach", *SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization*. **31** (2): 387–438, [doi:10.1137/0331020](https://doi.org/10.1137/0331020). MR 1205983.
- Cahn, J. W. & Taylor, J. E. (1994), "Overview No. 113. Surface motion by surface diffusion", *Acta Metallurgica et Materialia*. **42** (4): 1045–1053, [doi:10.1016/0956-7151(94)90123-6](https://doi.org/10.1016/0956-7151(94)90123-6).
- Taylor, Jean E. (2003), "Some mathematical challenges in materials science", *Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society*. **40** (1): 69–87, [doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-02-00967-9](https://doi.org/10.1090/s0273-0979-02-00967-9). MR 1943134.
- Taylor, Jean E. (2006), "Soap bubbles and crystals", *Resonance*. **11** (6): 26–30, [doi:10.1007/BF02838879](https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02838879). [S2CID 122133930](https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:122133930).

## References

1. ["Jean Taylor", Biographies of Women Mathematicians](http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/jtaylor.htm), [Agnes Scott College](/source/Agnes_Scott_College)

1. [Emeritus faculty listing](http://www.math.rutgers.edu/people/?type=emeritus), Rutgers University Mathematics Department, retrieved 2012-07-04.

1. [Visiting members and research fellows](http://math.nyu.edu/people/visitors.html), Courant Institute, retrieved 2012-07-04.

1. ["Jean E. Taylor: Five Little Crystals and How They Grew"](http://www.awm-math.org/noetherbrochure/Taylor03.html), "Profiles of Women in Mathematics: The Emmy Noether Lectures", [Association for Women in Mathematics](/source/Association_for_Women_in_Mathematics), 2003, [archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20161022210404/http://www.awm-math.org/noetherbrochure/Taylor03.html) 2016-10-22 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 2012-07-04

1. [AWM history](https://sites.google.com/site/awmmath/awm/history), Association for Women in Mathematics, retrieved 2012-07-04.

1. Overbye, Dennis (October 9, 2007), ["William T. Golden, Financier and Key Science Adviser, Is Dead at 97"](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/us/09golden.html), *[New York Times](/source/New_York_Times)*.

1. ["Jean Taylor"](http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/jtaylor.htm). agnesscott.edu. Retrieved 2014-01-25.

1. Taylor (1976).

1. ["Plateau problem | mathematics | Britannica"](https://www.britannica.com/science/Plateau-problem). *www.britannica.com*. Retrieved 2023-03-01.

1. [List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society](https://www.ams.org/profession/fellows-list), retrieved 2013-08-25.

1. ["SIAM Fellows: Class of 2017"](http://fellows.siam.org/index.php?sort=year&value=2017). *Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics*. Retrieved 24 April 2017.

1. ["2018 Inaugural Class of AWM Fellows"](https://awm-math.org/awards/awm-fellows/). *awm-math.org/awards/awm-fellows/2018-awm-fellows*. Association for Women in Mathematics. Retrieved 9 January 2021.

## External links

- [Home page at Rutgers](http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~taylor/)

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