Ruth Moufang
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Ruth Moufang (1905-1977) was a German mathematician whose work in projective geometry built upon the work of David Hilbert. She obtained her doctorate in 1931, and was responsible for ground-breaking work on non-associative algebraic structures, including the Moufang loops named after her. Her most important contribution to the foundations of geometry was the discovery that by replacing the incidence theorem of Desargues with the theorem of the complete quadrilateral (also known as as the invariance of the fourth harmonic point) together with the incidence axioms of Hilbert, you obtain an alternative divsion algebra instead of a skew field. Denied permission to teach by Hitler's minister of education, she worked in private industry until 1946, when she became the first woman professor at the University of Frankfurt.
References
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Moufang.html
