Biography:Bettina Richmond

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Short description: German-American mathematician and murder victim

Martha Bettina Richmond (née Zoeller, January 30, 1958 – November 22, 2009) was a German-American mathematician, mathematics textbook author, professor at Western Kentucky University, and murder victim.

Life

Richmond was born in Dresden on January 30, 1958,[1] earned a vordiplom (the German equivalent of a bachelor's degree) from the University of Würzburg,[E] and completed her Ph.D. at Florida State University in 1985.[2] Her doctoral dissertation, Freeness of Hopf algebras over grouplike subalgebras, was supervised by Warren Nichols, a student of Irving Kaplansky.[3]

She became a professor at Western Kentucky University, teaching there for 23 years.[2] Topics in her mathematical research included abstract algebra, transformation semigroups, ring theory, and Hopf algebra,[A][B] including the proof of the Nichols–Zoeller freeness theorem in Hopf algebra.[A][4] With her husband, Thomas Richmond, she was the author of a mathematics textbook, A Discrete Transition to Advanced Mathematics.[C] She also published works in recreational mathematics.[D][E]

Murder

Richmond was stabbed to death on November 22, 2009, in the parking lot of a racquetball facility in downtown Bowling Green, Kentucky. According to the FBI, her murder was likely an opportunistic crime motivated by armed robbery.[5] At the time of her death, she had been on leave from her faculty position to assist her father in Germany. The murder is still unsolved.[6]

Selected publications

A. Nichols, Warren D.; Zoeller, M. Bettina (1989), "A Hopf algebra freeness theorem", American Journal of Mathematics 111 (2): 381–385, doi:10.2307/2374514 
B. Nichols, Warren D.; Richmond, M. Bettina (1996), "The Grothendieck group of a Hopf algebra", Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra 106 (3): 297–306, doi:10.1016/0022-4049(95)00023-2 
C. Richmond, Bettina; Richmond, Thomas (2004), A Discrete Transition To Advanced Mathematics, Thomson/Brooks/Cole ; reprinted by American Mathematical Society, Pure and Applied Undergraduate Texts 3, 2009; 2nd ed., Pure and Applied Undergraduate Texts 63, 2023[7]
D. Richmond, Bettina; Richmond, Tom (December 2009), "How to recognize a parabola", The American Mathematical Monthly 116 (10): 910–922, doi:10.4169/000298909x477023 
E. Richmond, Bettina (November 2010), "On a perplexing polynomial puzzle", The College Mathematics Journal 41 (5): 400–403, doi:10.4169/074683410x522017, https://maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/cmj_ftp/CMJ/November%202010/5%20Capsules/1%20Richmond/10-027_Richmond.pdf 

References

  1. "Bettina Richmond", Bowling Green Daily News, November 25, 2009, https://www.bgdailynews.com/obituaries/bettina-richmond/article_da7ad990-592e-5d83-af0b-f1ea32d254b9.html, retrieved 2023-10-14 
  2. 2.0 2.1 In memory 2008–2009, American Mathematical Society, http://www.ams.org/publicoutreach/in-memory/inmemory-2008-2009, retrieved 2023-10-14 
  3. Martha Bettina Zoeller at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. Scharfschwerdt, Boris (2001), "The Nichols Zoeller theorem for Hopf algebras in the category of Yetter Drinfeld modules", Communications in Algebra 29 (6): 2481–2487, doi:10.1081/AGB-100002402 
  5. Highland, Deborah (November 23, 2011), "Family of slain WKU professor, police continue to look for clues about 2009 stabbing death", Kentucky New Era, https://www.kentuckynewera.com/web/news/article_6f58493e-1577-11e1-9853-001cc4c03286.html 
  6. Story, Justin (November 22, 2016), "Seven years later, Richmond's death remains unsolved", Bowling Green Daily News, https://www.bgdailynews.com/news/seven-years-later-richmonds-death-remains-unsolved/article_ff41e4e1-d3fe-55f9-9a6c-2b0ace8c43ac.html, retrieved 2023-10-14 
  7. Rogovchenko, Yuri V., "Review of A Discrete Transition To Advanced Mathematics (2009 ed.)", zbMATH