Rate My Professor Lorraine Foster

Lorraine Foster is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mathematics at California State University, Northridge, where she joined the faculty in 1964. She earned a B.A. from Occidental College in 1960 and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 1964, becoming the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from Caltech. Her doctoral dissertation, "On the Characteristic Roots of the Product of Certain Rational Integral Matrices of Order Two," was supervised by Olga Taussky-Todd.

Foster's research specializations include number theory, mathematical symmetry, group theory, and Galois theory. Key publications include "On the characteristic roots of the product of certain rational integral matrices of order two" (Pacific Journal of Mathematics, 1966), "Exponential diophantine equations" with J. L. Brenner (Pacific Journal of Mathematics, 1982), papers on Diophantine equations co-authored with L. J. Alex (Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics, 1983, 1985, 1992), "On the symmetry group of the dodecahedron" (Mathematics Magazine, 1990), and "Convex polyhedral models for the finite three-dimensional isometry groups" (The Mathematical Heritage of C. F. Gauss, 1991). She produced educational videos on finite symmetry groups (1989), Archimedean polyhedra (1990), the Alhambra's geometry (1991), and regular-faced polyhedra (1992). Foster received CSUN Honored Faculty Year Outstanding Faculty Awards in 1990 and 1991, and the Scholarly Publication Award in 1992.