Margaret Wright

Who is Margaret Wright?

Margaret H. Wright is an American computer scientist.

Wright spent her childhood in Hanford, California, and Tucson, Arizona, where she attended high school. She developed an interest in mathematics at an early age and studied the subject at Stanford University, where she received a B.S. degree in Mathematics and an M.S. in Computer Science. She then worked for several years at GTE Sylvania, after which she returned to Stanford to continue her study in computer science, obtaining a Ph.D. in 1976.

She is the Silver Professor of Computer Science and former Chair of the Computer Science department at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, with research interests in optimization, linear algebra, and scientific computing. She is a member of the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Engineering. Earlier at Bell Laboratories, she became head of the Scientific Computing Research Department in 1997, and a Bell Labs Fellow.

She has served as president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and is senior editor of the SIAM Review. In 2009 she became a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.