Martha Bettina Richmond (née Zoeller, January 30, 1958 – November 22, 2009) was a German-American mathematician, mathematics textbook author, professor at Western Kentucky University, and murder victim.
Life
Richmond was born in Dresden on January 30, 1958,[1] earned a vordiplom (the German equivalent of a bachelor's degree) from the University of Würzburg,[E] and completed her Ph.D. at Florida State University in 1985.[2] Her doctoral dissertation, Freeness of Hopf algebras over grouplike subalgebras, was supervised by Warren Nichols, a student of Irving Kaplansky.[3]
She became a professor at Western Kentucky University, teaching there for 23 years.[2] Topics in her mathematical research included abstract algebra, transformation semigroups, ring theory, and Hopf algebra,[A][B] including the proof of the Nichols–Zoeller freeness theorem in Hopf algebra.[A][4] With her husband, Thomas Richmond, she was the author of a mathematics textbook, A Discrete Transition to Advanced Mathematics.[C] She also published works in recreational mathematics.[D][E]
Murder
Richmond was stabbed to death on November 22, 2009, in the parking lot of a racquetball facility in downtown Bowling Green, Kentucky. According to the FBI, her murder was likely an opportunistic crime motivated by armed robbery.[5] At the time of her death, she had been on leave from her faculty position to assist her father in Germany. The murder is still unsolved.[6]