September : Math & Latinos
Updated: Sep 2
The Maya
"In Lak'ech Ala K'in" I am you, and you are another me. ~ The Maya
The MayaToday, more than seven million Maya live in their original homelands of Mesoamerica and in countries all over the world. Two thousand years ago, the ancient Maya developed one of the most advanced civilizations in the Americas. They developed a written language of hieroglyphs and invented the mathematical concept of zero. With their expertise in astronomy and mathematics, the Maya developed a complex and accurate calendar system. | Mayan MathematicsThe Maya used a base 20 (vigesimal) numerical system, unlike our current base 10 or the Babylonian base 60 system that we still use for time-keeping. Consequently, instead of counting, as we do, in multiples of 1, 10, 100, and so on (10 raised to the power of 0, 1, and 2, respectively), the Maya counted in 1s, 20s, 400s, and so on (20 raised to the power of 0, 1, and 2, respectively). |
Mesoamerica and Mexican History
The Maya Base-20 Number System
Richard Tapia
Don't stop and face adversity. Everyone can handle success, but it's important to learn how to navigate adversity. If things don't all happen according to plan, don't stop — adapt. ~ Richard Tapia
Richard Alfred TapiaRichard Alfred Tapia (March 25, 1938 – May 22, 2026) was an American mathematician and academic who was a professor at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He held the title of University Professor, the university's highest academic rank. In 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Tapia the Presidential Award for Mathematics, Science, and Engineering Mentoring. In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded Tapia the National Medal of Science. | He was the Maxfield and Oshman professor of engineering; associate director of graduate studies, Office of Research and Graduate Studies; and director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education at Rice University. Tapia's mathematical research was centered on mathematical optimization and iterative methods for nonlinear problems, with his most recent work focused on algorithms for constrained optimization and interior point methods for linear and nonlinear programming. |
Richard Tapia - 2010 National Medal of Science
Ellen Ochoa
What everyone in the astronaut corps shares in common is not gender or ethnic background, but motivation, perseverance, and desire - the desire to participate in a voyage of discovery ~ Ellen Ochoa
Ellen OchoaEllen Ochoa (born May 10, 1958) is an American engineer, former astronaut and former Director of the Johnson Space Center. In 1993 Ochoa became the first Hispanic woman to go to space when she served on a nine-day mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. As a doctoral student at Stanford, and later as a researcher at Sandia National Laboratories and the NASA Ames Research Center, Ochoa investigated optical systems for performing information processing. | As Chief of the Intelligent Systems Technology Branch at Ames, she supervised 35 engineers and scientists in the research and development of computational systems for aerospace missions. |
Ellen Ochoa : First Latina in Space
José M. Hernández
I was rejected from NASA’s astronaut program eleven times. People get rejected twice, on average, before they’re picked. The sixth year that NASA rejected me, I crumpled up the rejection letter and threw it on the bedroom floor. I was going to quit trying, but [my wife] talked me out of it. ‘Let NASA be the one to disqualify you, don’t disqualify yourself,’ she told me. ~ José M. Hernández
José M. HernándezJosé M. Hernández (born August 7, 1962) José Moreno Hernández (born August 7, 1962) is a former NASA astronaut and American engineer . Hernández was assigned to the crew of Space Shuttle mission STS-128. Hernández previously developed equipment for full-field digital mammography at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Hernández left NASA in 2011. Hernández worked from 1980 to 2004 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. | While there, Hernández, along with a commercial colleague, developed the first full-field digital mammography imaging system. This invention aids in the early detection of breast cancer. |
Reaching for the Stars
Jaime Escalante
You do not enter the future. You create the future. The future is created through hard work. ~ Jaime Escalante
Jaime Alfonso Escalante GutiérrezJaime Alfonso Escalante Gutiérrez (December 31, 1930 – March 30, 2010) was a Bolivian-American educator known for teaching students calculus from 1974 to 1991 at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. Escalante was the subject of the 1988 film Stand and Deliver, in which he is portrayed by Edward James Olmos. In 1982, Escalante first gained media attention when 18 of his students passed the Advanced Placement Calculus exam. | In 1983, the number of students enrolling and passing the calculus test more than doubled. That year, 33 students took the exam, and 30 passed. That year, he also started to teach calculus at East Los Angeles College. By 1987, 83 students passed the AB version of the exam, and another 12 passed the BC version. That was the peak for the calculus program. In 1990, Escalante worked with the Foundation for Advancements in Science and Education to produce the video series Futures, which won a Peabody Award. |
Making a Difference
Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski
I don't want to make billionaires richer. I want to understand how the universe works. ~ Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski
Sabrina Gonzalez PasterskiSabrina Gonzalez Pasterski (born June 3, 1993) is an American theoretical physicist specializing in high energy physics and celestial holography at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Beginning at age 12, she spent two years building a Zenith CH 601 XL from a kit, making several modifications for which she sought airworthiness certification. She was allowed to perform a flight test with a certified flight instructor. She began an undergraduate degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Fall 2010 due to the aircraft she had built when she was younger. While there, she became the first freshman to be named to the NASA January Operational Internship. and was among those awarded MIT's inaugural Freshman Entrepreneurship Award. | In 2011, she held an internship at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. She received a Bachelor of Science in physics in 2013, after three years of attendance and as the first woman in decades to graduate MIT at the top of her class in the physics program and win a Joel Matthew Orloff scholarship award with a 5.0 grade point average. At Princeton, she began work on celestial holography, a hypothetical holography of the universe. She joined the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in 2021, where she is the founder and principal investigator of the Celestial Holography Initiative. |
From Building a Plane to Mapping the Universe
List of Latinos in Mathematics
Wikipedia Category "Spanish mathematicians".
Wikipedia Category "Mexican mathematicians"
Honoring Five Historic Latino and Hispanic Mathematicians
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