Edith Hirsch Luchins

Edith Hirsch Luchins (21 December 1921 Brzeziny, Poland – 18 November 2002 Suffern, New York) was a Polish-American mathematician. She was married to Abraham S. Luchins. The Luchins and Luchins' Water Jar Experiment is named after them.

Edith Hirsch was born in 1921 in Poland, though she emigrated to the United States at age six. Her family settled in New York City, where they encouraged her education. In high school she excelled at mathematics, tutoring other students and assisting teachers with grading. She earned both her bachelor's and master's degrees from NYU. In 1942 she married Abraham Luchins, an educational psychologist.

Luchins taught at Brooklyn College and worked for the government as an inspector of anti-aircraft equipment at Sperry Gyroscope during World War II. During this time women scientists and mathematicians were in high demand due to the men being away at war. Luchins took several years away from her doctoral studies, which she had begun at NYU, in order to raise her children and follow her husband to Montreal and then Oregon. During this time she developed an interest in educational mathematics through working with her husband, with whom she wrote several books. In 1957, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. She then taught for four years at the University of Miami before being appointed as an associate professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic in 1962. In 1970, she became the first female full professor at Rensselaer, where she remained until her retirement in 1992. However, she remained active in research until her death.

Luchins was a member of the Mathematical Association of America, the American Mathematical Society, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the American Education Research Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

• 1959 (with Abraham S. Luchins): Rigidity of Behavior - A Variational Approach to the Effect of Einstellung. University of Oregon Books: Eugene, Oregon.
• 1965 (with Abraham S. Luchins): Logical Foundations of Mathematics for Behavioral Scientists. Holt, Rinehart: New York.
• 1969 (with Abraham S. Luchins): The Search for Factors that Extremize the Autokinetic Effect. Faculty-Student Association: State University of New York at Albany.