Sally Patricia Cockburn (born 1960)[1] is a mathematician whose research ranges from algebraic topology and set theory to geometric graph theory and combinatorial optimization. A Canadian immigrant to the US, she is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Mathematics at Hamilton College, and former chair of the mathematics department at Hamilton.[2][3]
Cockburn is originally from Ottawa. She earned a bachelor's and master's degree from Queen's University in Ontario, in 1982 and 1984 respectively,[4] and also has a master's degree from the University of Ottawa.[3] She completed her Ph.D. in algebraic topology in 1991 from Yale University. Her dissertation, The Gamma-Filtration on Extra-Special P-Groups, was supervised by Ronnie Lee.[5]
She joined the Hamilton College faculty in 1991, and was promoted to full professor in 2014.[2] At Hamilton, she has also served as the coach for the college's squash team.[4]
Cockburn won the 2014 Carl B. Allendoerfer Award of the Mathematical Association of America with Joshua Lesperance for their joint work, "deranged socks", on a variation of the problem of counting derangements.[4][6]