Maria Chudnovsky
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Having won a 2012 MacArthur Fellowship implies that 35-year-old mathematician Maria Chudnovsky is a genius. But other committees have been explicit in calling her a “genius” — as well as “brilliant” and “distinguished” — when bestowing honors upon her. A conversation with the Columbia University professor isn’t all quantum theories and equations, though. In fact, one of Chudnovsky’s greatest strengths is making mathematics applicable to everyday situations — or, as she says, recording “relations between objects.”
In October, Chudnovsky received a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship to continue her work in Columbia’s department of industrial engineering and operations research. Chudnovsky focuses on the fundamental principles of graph theory. In 2002, she was an integral part of a team that proved the strong perfect graph theorem, which helps explain how to most efficiently set up cellphone networks, airline scheduling and package delivery systems.
Chudnovsky was born in Russia and raised in Israel. She completed her undergraduate work at Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology, and served in the Israeli Defense Force for three years. After finishing her Master of Science degree at Technion, Chudnovsky came to study in the United States, earning a Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 2003.
Chudnovsky, a proud member of both the Columbia Jewish community and the worldwide Jewish science community, compares studying mathematics to doing a crossword puzzle: Gratification comes from being able to “know if what you did is right or wrong.” It seems as though whatever she is doing is right.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
