Harriet Pollatsek

Harriet Suzanne Katcher Pollatsek (born Harriet Katcher, May 2, 1942) is an American mathematician and Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Mount Holyoke College.

Education and career Born to a Jewish family in Detroit, Michigan, Pollatsek entered the honors program at University of Michigan in 1959, the first person in her family to attend college. After graduating she held short-term teaching positions at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, the University of Toledo, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Following this, she joined the faculty at Mount Holyoke College in 1970,

She has been active in developing new methods of teaching mathematics, particularly in developing a new method of teaching calculus called calculus in context. This method embeds calculus concepts in specific questions from various sciences and then goes to the abstract and generalized concepts.

She has worked on summer mathematical research with undergraduates under the NSF program Research Experiences for Undergraduates.

In 2007 Pollatsek was presented with the Mount Holyoke College Faculty Prize for Teaching.