a258  1759  19 May 89
AM-Math Prodigy,0263
British Teen-age Prodigy Coming to Harvard to Teach, Do Math Research
    CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - A 17-year-old British math prodigy has
accepted a one-year post as a visiting lecturer at Harvard
University, becoming one of the youngest Ivy League faculty members
ever, Harvard officials said Friday.
    Ruth J. Lawrence was taught by her father in their home in
Huddersfield, England, and had never been to school before she
entered Oxford University at age 11 in 1983.
    She graduated from the prestigious British university just two years
later, at age 13, and expects to receive a doctorate in mathematics
there this year.
    ''She's a very pleasant, well-balanced person, happy to talk about
various topics and not particularly aggressive or particularly shy,''
said Vaughan Jones, a professor of mathematics at the University of
California at Berkeley.
    Lawrence was courted by several leading American universities,
including Berkeley and the Institute for Advanced Studies at
Princeton University in New Jersey, before she accepted Harvard's
offer.
    Jones, who has visited Lawrence in England, said she is a vegetarian
and likes bicycling on a tandem bike with her father, a computer
consultant.
    While at Oxford, she earned a reputation as ''the best undergraduate
ever in math there,'' Jones added.
    Harvard officials said she will arrive in the fall and spend her
first semester in Cambridge doing research, free of teaching
responsibilities. In the spring, she is scheduled to lead a graduate
seminar on knot theory, an area of theoretical mathematics dealing
with knots and similar curved, three dimensional objects.
    
 
AP-NY-05-19-89 2026EDT
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