Krystyna Kuperberg

Krystyna Maria Kuperberg (born Krystyna M. Trybulec; 17 July 1944) is a Polish-American mathematician who currently works as a professor of mathematics at Auburn University. She is a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

Early life and family Her parents, Jan W. and Barbara H. Trybulec, were pharmacists and owned a pharmacy in Tarnów. Her older brother is Andrzej Trybulec. Her husband Włodzimierz Kuperberg and her son Greg Kuperberg are also mathematicians, while her daughter Anna Kuperberg is a photographer.

Education and career After attending high school in Gdańsk, she entered the University of Warsaw in 1962, where she studied mathematics. Her first mathematics course was taught by Andrzej Mostowski; later she attended topology lectures of Karol Borsuk and became fascinated by topology. In 1998, she was elected to the AMS Editorial Boards Committee.

Contributions In 1987 she solved a problem of Bronisław Knaster concerning bi-homogeneity of continua. The solution to that problem led to her 1993 work in which she constructed a smooth counterexample to the Seifert conjecture. In 2012, she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. In 2025, she was elected as a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Selected publications