There are various annual lectures by prominent women mathematicians. In addition, in recent years many of the distinguished EMS lecturers have been women. Beyond the lectures listed below, the Agnes Scott College women in maths website has a further list of lecture series for women mathematicians here.
The Mary Cartwright Lecture is an annual event organised by the London Mathematical Society and forms part of the annual programme of Society Meetings.
Dame Mary Cartwright was the first British women to have a career as a professional mathematician in the modern sense. Her life spanned the 20th century. Her work became of fundamental importance to chaos theory. She was the first female mathematician to become a member of the Royal Society and was Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge 1948-68.
AWM and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) established the annual Sonia Kovalevsky Lecture to highlight significant contributions of women to applied or computational mathematics. This lecture is given annually at the SIAM Annual Meeting.
Sonia Kovalevskaya (1850-1891) was the most widely known Russian mathematician of the late 19th century. In 1874, she received her Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Göttingen and was appointed lecturer at the University of Stockholm in 1883. She did her most important work in the theory of differential equations.
Commemorating Olga Ladyzhenskaya’s contributions to mathematical physics and partial differential equations, the research area Mathematical Sciences organises the Ladyzhenskaya Lecture Leipzig. They will be given by renowned female mathematicians and they will take place each semester.
Olga A. Ladyzhenskaya (1922–2004) made deep and important contributions to the whole spectrum of partial differential equations. Her mathematical achievements were honored in many countries. In Germany she was a foreign member of the Leopoldina academy of sciences. Among her offices, she was president of the Mathematical Society of St. Petersburg and, as such, a successor of Euler. A longer article about her life and work can be found here.
AWM established the Emmy Noether Lectures in 1980 to honor women who have made fundamental and sustained contributions to the mathematical sciences. Starting 2015 it will be jointly sponsored by AWM and AMS. These one-hour expository lectures are presented at the Joint Mathematics Meetings each January.
Emmy Noether (1882 – 1935) was one of the great mathematicians of her time, someone who worked and struggled for what she loved and believed in. Her life and work remain a tremendous inspiration.
In honour of the great mathematician Emmy Noether the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Göttingen has created a visiting professorship named after the scientist, who studied, taught und researched in Göttingen from 1915 until 1933. Once a year the faculty awards the Emmy Noether professorship to an outstanding female mathematician who will visit Göttingen for 3 to 4 weeks to present a current field of research in talks and seminars.
An Olga Taussky-Todd Lecture has been held at each ICIAM Congress since 2007. This lecture is given by a woman who has made outstanding contributions in applied mathematics and /or scientific computation.
Olga Taussky-Todd (1906-1995) worked in theoretical and applied mathematics. Her research helped to establish linear algebra and matrix theory as a research area in mathematics, and her varied appointments, in both Europe and North America and including positions in both academia and government laboratories, set an example for applied mathematicians. Her support and encouragement of younger women mathematicians is warmly remembered.