CATHLEEN MORAWETZ

MORAWETZ--Cathleen Synge,

94, died peacefully at her longtime home in Greenwich Village on August 8, 2017. A woman of extraordinary achievement, she was an inspiration to her large and growing family. She loved sailing in Lake Muskoka, had a wonderful sense of humor and was as much at home proving a complex theorem as getting down on the floor to play with her grandchildren. As a pioneering woman in mathematics, she served as Director of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, President of the American Mathematical Society, where she was the first woman to deliver their distinguished Gibbs lecture, and was a recipient of the National Medal of Science. She was twice a Guggenheim Fellow and served as a Trustee of Princeton University and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Her numerous honorary degrees include Brown, Princeton, Trinity College Dublin, Duke, Smith and New York University. She was deeply proud of her Irish heritage, including her great- uncle, the playwright John Millington Synge and her father, the distinguished mathematician John Lighton Synge. She is survived by her husband of 71 years, Herbert Morawetz, her sister, Isabel Seddon, her children, Pegeen Rubinstein (David), John Morawetz, Lida Jeck (James), Nancy Morawetz (Manuel Vargas), her grandchildren, Eric (Lauren), William (Abigail), Daniel (Tiffany), Matthew, Alicia, Marisa, her step- grandchildren, Jeremy, Chris, Aupala and Keenan, her great-grandchildren, Xavier, Linus and Peter, and adoring relatives around the world. Contributions in her memory can be made to the Cathleen Synge Morawetz Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.