Ruth Rebekka Struik

1928 - 2022

Ruth Rebekka Struik, a mathematician and lifelong social justice activist, died Feb. 9 at Frasier Meadows Retirement Community in Boulder at age 93. The cause was heart failure.

Dr. Struik taught for 40 years at the University of Colorado, mostly at the Boulder campus. Her area of research was group theory. She taught all levels of math, but her particular passion was mentoring young women starting their careers in math and science.

Dr. Struik was born in Worcester, MA, in 1928, the eldest of three daughters. She was born shortly after her parents, Dirk
Jan and Saly Ruth (Ramler) Struik, both mathematicians, emigrated from the Netherlands. Her mother may have been the first woman to earn a mathematics doctorate from Charles University in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

Her father was a well-known mathematician and historian of science whose specialties were multidimensional geometry and tensor analysis. An avid Marxist, he was indicted on trumped-up charges during the McCarthy Era and placed on leave from his job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So Rebekka's formative years were bracketed by FBI attention and her father's long-running court case. All charges were eventually dropped.

She grew up during the Depression in Belmont, MA. and graduated summa cum laude in 1949 from Swarthmore College, with a degree in mathematics. She earned a master's degree at the University of Illinois in 1951 and a Ph.D from the Courant Institute of New York University in 1955. Despite her credentials, she was unable to find employment, due to sexism and her leftist politics. Her fellowship at Northwestern University was revoked during the McCarthy Era.

In early 1952, Dr. Struik met the gifted young physicist Hans Freistadt, at the Progressive Party presidential nominating convention in Chicago, where W.E.B. Du Bois was the keynote speaker. They married later that year.

Dr. Freistadt, a refugee from Hitler's Austria, had his own McCarthy Era struggles. In 1949, the New York Times had published an outraged report that an avowed Communist was working for the Atomic Energy Commission, and taxpayer money was being spent educating this foreign-born physicist. A Congressional hearing resulted, also covered by the Times. Editorialists across the country weighed in. Dr. Freistadt lost his AEC fellowship, which was financing his Ph.D studies. He eventually earned his doctorate, but he was blackballed in the physics world.

In 1957, the couple moved to Vancouver, B.C., where Dr. Struik supported her husband as he pivoted careers and went to medical school at the University of British Columbia.

They settled in Colorado in the early 1960s. They had three daughters and divorced in 1970. Dr. Freistadt settled in Oroville, CA, where he worked for many years as an obstetrician. He died in 2015.

In 1961, Dr. Struik was hired as a lecturer at the University of Colorado, the math department's first married woman with children. She retired almost 40 years later, a full professor. She published about a dozen papers in her specialty, group theory. In the latter years of her career, she expanded into history of mathematics, numerical analysis and probability, cryptography, and assessments of male and female performance in math. She often said that the most popular paper she published each year was the list she compiled from public records of the salaries of all the math department's employees. From this data, she eventually had evidence showing women were vastly underpaid compared to men with similar resumés. In the 1980s, she was among the women
who challenged the university over sex discrimination and won settlements, including back pay. Her career is discussed in the book: "Women Becoming Mathematicians: Creating a Professional Identity in Post-World War II America" by Margaret A. M. Murray.

She was an early adopter of computers and email, when computer science was a subset of mathematics. But she later eschewed all contact with computers over her concerns about privacy.

Dr. Struik studied French, Russian and Chinese, and for some years was a translator of Russian scientific papers into English.

Throughout her life, including during retirement, Dr. Struik was active in numerous social justice causes, including women's rights, voter education and union organizing. She was also an early activist in environmentalism, supporting recycling and pushing for bike paths and bike lanes in and around Boulder.

She was active for many years in the Boulder Area Labor Council. She attempted to unionize the University of
Colorado faculty in the mid-70s. She was a member of the American Federation of Teachers and the American
Association of University Professors.

She was one of the organizers of her local chapter of NOW (National Organization for Women), promoting the
election of women to the Boulder City Council. She was also active in the League of Women Voters. She worked
for campaign finance reform, and on voter registration. She worked on many political campaigns, including Pat
Schroeder's Congressional campaign and Dorothy Rupert's state legislative races.

She was a passionate supporter of gun control, protesting sales of firearms at local gun shows.

She was an activist for universal health care with the Colorado Coalition for Single Payer and the Physicians for a National Health Program.

She was a stalwart in the Colorado Social Legislation Committee for many years, helping the group track legislation on issues such as health care, education, poverty, housing and violence prevention.

She received many awards for her activism, but her favorites may have been the three "Oscars" bestowed by Eco-Cycle to Boulder's "Recycler of the Year." The statuettes of Sesame Street's Oscar the Grouch, poking his head out of his garbage can, held pride of place in her apartment at Frasier Meadows. Until her final illness, she policed her environment to make sure that recycling, compost and landfill were correctly separated.

An information fanatic, she watched news constantly, and loved documentaries. She was an avid supporter of public radio. She enjoyed knitting, making stuffed toys for children as well as sketching and painting watercolors of flowers and nature. She also took joy in teaching union ballads and feminist songs to her daughters.

Her family includes her three daughters: Marion Struik Freistadt of New Orleans, Margo Struik Freistadt (Lynn Ludlow) of San Francisco, Lulu Friesdat (Joseph Illidge) of Brooklyn, N.Y.; two grandchildren: Kenny Ludlow (Kevin Owens) of San Francisco and Shafir Wittenberg of Baton Rouge, LA; one sister, Gwendolyn Struik Bray of Nelson, New Zealand; as well as nieces, nephews, grand-nieces and grand-nephews in Massachusetts, Texas and New Zealand.

The family notes with immense gratitude the community of caregivers and residents at Frasier Meadows who cared for, supported and loved Rebekka for the past 12 years, through her time in independent living, assisted living and finally hospice care.

Donations in her memory can be made to the League of Women Voters, the National Organization for Women, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, KGNU, Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, Boulder Community Food
Share, SMART Elections, or the Kovalevskaia Fund, which supports female math and science students in the
developing world.

A celebration of Rebekka's life is planned for 2 p.m. Saturday, May 7, at Frasier Meadows Retirement
Community, 350 Ponca Pl., Boulder Colo.