Irongirl

I would like to explain the title Irongirl and Ironboy.
An Ironman Triathlon consists of a 4km swim, a 180km bikeride, and a marathon run. It is a grand test of physical and mental endurance. On Saturday, September 16th, 7pm, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) broadcast the Olympic triathlon (1.5 km swim, 40km bike, 10km run) live. A 25 year old Canadian by the name of Simon Whitfield⁰² shocked the world by outsprinting Vuckovic of Germany for Olympic gold! Simon showed grit, determination, patience, discipline, heart, courage, and a harmony between physical and mental endurance in his win.
In order to play in an Olympic triathlon (and win the gold medal like Simon), you need the intuition of a kid and the courage of a kid of steel⁰³.
The point is that mathematics is also a grand test of physical and mental endurance. Canadian mathematicians have the same traits as Simon but don't have the forum of the Olympics to show them off.
Hence, Irongirl and Ironboy is a spin on Ironman.
My vision is to use the Irongirl and Ironboy section in order to profile a Canadian mathematician (student or professional). Letters welcome.
In order to play with mathematics (and solve open problems), you have to have the intuition of a kid and the courage of a kid of steel.

Profile: Wai Ling Yee, University of Waterloo
Profile by Ken Davidson (KRD), University of Waterloo.

Wai Ling Yee graduated from the University of Waterloo this past August, and was one of our top students. As well as being a student in my second year group theory class, I knew her from two summers she spent working here on summer NSERC grants where we had a number of students working in analysis. Part of their time was spent running a learning seminar (on convexity one year, and on continuous optimization the other).
She worked on a research project with Kathryn Hare⁰⁴ on some questions about harmonic analysis on Lie groups, a subject Wai Ling knew nothing about when she started. This was a very successful project that resulted in a publication each summer. The first has appearred:

K.E. Hare, D.C. Wilson and W.L. Yee, Pointwise estimates of the size of characters of compact Lie groups, J. Austral. Math. Soc. 69 (2000), 61-84.

As a result, Wai Ling Yee was nominated for the AMS-MAA-SIAM Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize⁰⁵ for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student. She was a very close runner up for this award.
Wai Ling Yee also did extremely well on the Putnam⁰⁶, getting an Honorable Mention in the 1999 competition. She was the highest ranking women last year, and so won the Elizabeth Putnam prize⁰⁷. That was a good year for Waterloo, which won the team competition by virtue of a stirling performance by many students including two Putnam fellows (top 6 overall) and two Honorable Mentions (top 30 overall).
Wai Ling is now a graduate student at MIT (http://www-math.mit.edu). I recently had a conversation with her, and she answered the following questions by e-mail. The other comments were from our unrecorded conversation.

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Where are you from originally? I was born in Toronto and grew up in Mississauga.

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What program did you study at U. Waterloo? I completed a double honours degree in computer science and pure mathematics at the University of Waterloo.

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What parts of your studies did you like best? I most enjoyed courses in which the professor gave interesting problems. I would have to say that the students and professors at Waterloo were what made my undergraduate experience so extraordinary. Not only was I constantly astounded by the abilities of my classmates, I was fortunate to find that they were extremely supportive people. The pure mathematics professors always took a personal interest in their students. Even though I have graduated, some of them still check up on me intermittently to see how I'm doing. KRD: She also mentioned that she appreciated the emphasis on problem solving in and out of courses. Apparently other graduate students from places like Harvard had not learned how to give complete proofs, and still believed that it was enough to present the rough idea. Wai Ling felt that she had learned how to give complete arguments.

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Tell us a bit about your summer NSERC project with Kathryn Hare. During my first summer working as a research assistant, Prof. Hare gave me the problem of finding pointwise bounds for the trace of a representation applied to a non-central element of a Lie group in terms of the degree of the representation. From these bounds, we determined the minimal integer k such that any continuous orbital measure convolved with itself k times belongs to L². The following summer, we found the minimal number k for which the Fourier transform of any continuous, orbital measure belongs to l².

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What are you studying now at MIT? I'm taking courses in Lie theory, differential geometry, and partial differential equations. I have yet to choose an area of specialization. KRD: She tells me that she really likes Lie groups, which was one of the reasons for choosing MIT in the first place. She did not much enjoy PDEs. The differential geometry was hard, perhaps because of the next answer.

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How well prepared were you for grad school? In the areas of algebra and analysis, Waterloo had prepared me well. However, I would have appreciated more knowledge in the areas of topology and geometry. Certainly, this would have been a smaller problem had I chosen to major in applied mathematics instead of computer science. KRD: I was also a graduate student in the US after a Canadian undergraduate degree (many years ago), and my experience was similar. Canadian programs are more intensive in the major subject, but no program does everything. I also felt that my background in analysis and algebra was outstanding, but I was missing the differential geometry background that American students from top schools had. I imagine that Wai Ling's knowledge of computer science will come in handy, and that she will overcome the deficit in geometry.

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What are your interests outside of mathematics? Of my hobbies, I spend the most time playing classical music and jazz and swing dancing. I find that they provide a relaxing contrast to mathematics. The athletic facilities at Waterloo and MIT have enabled me to take up new sports such as cross-country skiing and hockey, which I enjoy immensely.

I thank Ken Davidson (Pure Mathematics Department, University of Waterloo) for contributing this article. His website address is -Ed.

Andrew J. Irwin 2001-03-19