Jean E. Taylor papers

Jean Ellen Taylor was born in 1944 in San Mateo, California, and attended Mount Holyoke College from 1961-1965. She majored in chemistry, graduating with the highest grades in her class, summa cum laude, with membership in Phi Beta Kappa in 1965. She also received an M.S. in Physical Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1968, an M.S. in Mathematics from the University of Warwick in 1971, and a Ph.D. from Princeton Univeristy in 1973. After spending a year instructing at M.I.T. from 1972-1973, she became an assistant professor at Rutgers University and later achieved tenure, remaining at Rutgers until 2002. Her work has focused on the mathematical development of the shaoes of soap films and bubbles and, later, crystals. Her work was highly interdisciplinary, engaging with the work of materials scientists and chemists. She was elected to many prestigious institutions, including as the president of the Association of Women in Mathematics and as a member of the board of directors for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sceinces. In 2001, Taylor received a D.Sc., Honoris Causa, from her alma mater Mount Holyoke College. She was formerly married to Frederick Almgren Jr., a mathematician from Princeton, and later to William T. Golden. She had two step-children, Robert and Ann Almgren, and one daughter, Karen Almgren.