My friend and fellow mathematician, Nicole Tomczak-Jaegermann, passed away peacefully on the 17th of June. She had been suffering from Parkinson disease since 2007. Nicole received her Master’s (1968) and Ph.D. (1974) degrees from Warsaw University, where she held a position until she immigrated to North America in 1982. She was one of many talented students of Alexander Pelczynski, who was himself a student of Stanisław Mazur. In other words, she belongs to the venerable Polish school that founded the modern theory of Banach spaces.
I first met Nicole at Texas A&M university in 1982, where she was hosted by W.B. Johnson. She was looking to stay in North America. I recommended her enthusiastically to my colleagues at the University of Alberta, and I have been proud of this recommendation ever since. For she moved there in 1983, and proceeded -with another dear friend, Robert V. Moody- to become a pillar of their mathematics department. There she held a Canada Research Chair in Geometric Analysis. Continue reading