Ling Long (mathematician)


Ling Long is a Chinese mathematician whose research concerns modular forms, elliptic surfaces, and dessins d'enfants, as well as number theory in general. She is a professor of mathematics at Louisiana State University.

Early life and education

Ling Long was born in the 1970s in China. She is the oldest child in a family of four; Ling has one younger brother.
Long studied mathematics, computer science, and engineering at Tsinghua University, graduating in 1997. She went to Pennsylvania State University for her graduate studies; her dissertation, Modularity of Elliptic Surfaces, she worked on with Noriko Yui, visiting from Queen's University, in her time as a graduate student. She was supervised and influenced by Winnie Li.

Career

After postdoctoral research at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Long joined the faculty at Iowa State University in 2003.
She was the 2012–2013 winner of the of the Association for Women in Mathematics.
She spent the 2012–2013 term at Cornell University with funding from the Ruth I. Michler Memorial Prize. During this time, she conducted research in Galois representations with Ravi Ramakishna, and published a paper called "Some supercongruences occurring in truncated hypergeometric series". After her time at Cornell, she moved to Louisiana State.

Social factors

Long acknowledged that there was a stigma against women pursuing math careers when she was growing up, and that it was unusual for girls to continue math after the age of twelve. However, she didn't let the opinions of others influence her decision to become a mathematician. Long participated in the Women in Number Theory conference in 2008. While completing her PhD, she was influenced greatly by her supervisor, Wen-Ching Winnie Li. Li proved to be an influential mentor and role model for Long, especially in the midst of self-doubt as to whether she possessed the creativity needed for such a high level of mathematics.