Martha K. Smith

Martha K. Smith is an American mathematician and mathematics educator. She is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Mathematics and Associated Faculty (Emerita) of the Department of Statistics and Data Science at the University of Texas at Austin. She has made contributions to non-commutative algebra as well as to mathematics education.

Education and career Smith received a B.A. in mathematics (summa cum laude) from the University of Michigan in 1965, a M.S. in mathematics in 1967, and a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1970, both from the University of Chicago. Her dissertation "Group Algebras" was supervised by Israel Nathan Herstein.

After completing her doctoral studies, Smith became a G.C. Evans Instructor of Mathematics at Rice University in Houston, Texas, where she remained from 1970–1972. She joined the faculty of the Department of Mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis in St. Louis, Missouri in 1972 as an assistant professor. She began her long career at the University of Texas at Austin in 1973 as an Assistant Professor of mathematics. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1976 and to Professor in 1985. She retired in 2009 and became Professor Emerita of mathematics in 2019.