Uhlenbeck, who was born in 1942 in Cleveland, was a voracious reader as a child, but she didn’t become deeply interested in mathematics until she enrolled in the freshman honors math course at the University of Michigan. “The structure, elegance and beauty of mathematics struck me immediately, and I lost my heart to it,” ​ Mathematics research had another feature that appealed to her at the time: It is something you can work on in solitude, if you wish.