EWM-NL

Women in Mathematics poster

Inspired by a poster on Notable Women in Computing, EWM-NL collected ideas for a poster on Women in Mathematics. The material was prepared in 2021 by a joint Dutch and UK team comprising Silvy Hendriks, Houry Melkonian, and Maria Vlasiou, who conceived the project. The poster was designed by Jana Kleinberg.

Limited by space, but not by the plethora of talented mathematicians to choose from, the poster gives an impression of women mathematicians from ancient times until now. As is evident by the 2022 Fields Medals, our poster is already running behind the facts. Yet, we hope that it is informative and engaging!

You can freely download, print, and distribute the poster. Help us translate it into different languages. To do so, please email Maria Vlasiou to see if we are looking for volunteers for your language and further instructions. Email us if you need a higher resolution file. Typos may exist; please email Maria Vlasiou if you spot one. We continuously update the files, and we thus recommend to always download the latest version from here.

Available languages

Translations in progress

Azerbaijani, Basque, French, Hebrew, Hungarian, North Macedonian, Urdu

Social media

EWM-NL loves sharing the news of how people around the world use the poster. Please share photos of printouts, journals, or other media with the poster. You will find us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Consider using #womeninmathematicsposter and #ewm_nl.

Here are some impressions from around the world:

IMAGINARY Mathematics Exhibition, University of Klagenfurt (Austria), Gazeta de Matematica (Portugal), KTH University (Sweden), Ghent University (Belgium), CWI (the Netherlands), Bernoulli Institute (the Netherlands), ICMS (Edinburgh), University of Surrey (UK), Leiden University (the Netherlands), Heidelberg University (Germany), University of Zagreb (Croatia), Universidad Nacional de Colombia, University of Twente (the Netherlands), University of Prishtina (Kosovo), 1st General Lyceum in Pyrgos (Greece), Journal of the Turkish Mathematical Society, the annual meeting of the Dutch Society of Mathematics Educators (NVvW)

Quotes

Our colleagues have sent us the following messages:

The math department at UL FMF financed the printing of 100 A2 copies of the poster. Having a daughter at high school, I have given her one for her (female) math teacher. As she returned home, she told me that the other (female) math teachers saw it and wanted to have their own in their classrooms, so I have sent some more. The same happened at other high schools I have approached. A colleague of mine who works with people from National Education Institute Slovenia has provided the employees with some of the posters and they were more than happy to post them.
 From the various responses that I have received, it seems to me that perhaps the most important was, that women needed to have as we say ‘in black and white’ (means ‘printed’) the fact that there were and are clever and successful women and that knowing this and showing this to the public  makes their own (professional as well as personal) position stronger.

izr. prof. dr. Jasna Preselj, Ljubljana, Slovenia

I love this poster and find it inspirational. I made arrangements to distribute it for a second time during the annual meeting of the Nederlandse Vereniging van Wiskundeleraren (NVvW), where I took seventy copies with me. My colleagues were enthusiastic and also loved this poster. All my copies were snapped in a few minutes – even the one that I taped on the table as a display. Some teachers had already had a copy in their classrooms and told me that students are intrigued by it, search information on the women displayed, and even try to understand the mathematical contributions of these women. In some classrooms, the poster has been used as a source for research projects of students. This is a work that should be displayed in all classrooms in the country.

Dr. Jenneke Krüger