The AWM-SIAM Sonia Kovalevsky Lecture is an award and lecture series that "highlights significant contributions of women to applied or computational mathematics."[1] The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) planned the award[2] and lecture series in 2002 and first awarded it in 2003. The lecture is normally given each year at the SIAM Annual Meeting.[3] Award winners receive a signed certificate from the AWM and SIAM presidents.[4]
The lectures are named after Sonia Kovalevsky (1850–1891), a well-known Russian mathematician of the late 19th century.[5] Karl Weierstrass regarded Kovalevsky as his most talented student. In 1874, she received her Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Göttingen under the supervision of Weierstrass. She was granted privatdozentin status and taught at the University of Stockholm in 1883; she became an ordinary professor (the equivalent of full professor) at this institution in 1889. She was also an editor of the journal Acta Mathematica. Kovalevsky did her important work in the theory of partial differential equations and the rotation of a solid around a fixed point.[1]