Judith Gersting

Judith Lee MacKenzie Gersting (born August 20, 1940)^[1] is an American mathematician, computer scientist, and textbook author. She is a professor emerita of computer science at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis^[2] and at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo.^[3]

Education and career

Gersting graduated from Stetson University in 1962,^[4] and completed a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1969 at Arizona State University. Her dissertation, Some Results on ${\displaystyle t}$-Regressive Isols, concerned recursive function theory and was supervised by Matt Hassett.^[5][6]

After holding a faculty position in the department of mathematical sciences at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) for ten years, and becoming a full professor there, she spent a year at the University of Central Florida before returning to IUPUI in 1981 as professor of mathematics and acting chair of the department of computer and information science.^[4] She came to the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo in 1990,^[7] and chaired the computer science department there for many years. After retiring from the University of Hawaiʻi, she became a part-time faculty member at IUPUI.^[3]

Books

Gersting's books include:

• Abstract Algebra: A First Look (with Joseph E. Kuczkowski, Marcel Dekker, 1977)^[8]
• The Metric System (with Elaine V. Alton, Cummings, 1977)^[9]
• Yes–No; Stop–Go: Some Patterns in Mathematical Logic (with Joseph E. Kuczkowski and Don Madden, Crowell, 1977)^[10]
• Mathematical Structures for Computer Science (W. H. Freeman, 1982; 7th ed., 2014)^[11]
• Technical Calculus with Analytic Geometry (Wadsworth, 1984; Dover, 1992)^[12]
• The Computer: History, Workings, Uses & Limitations (with Michael C. Gemignani, Ardsley House, 1988)^[13]
• The Programming Process with Pascal (West Publishing, 1989)
• Invitation to Computer Science (with G. Michael Schneider, West Publishing, 1995; 8th ed., Cengage, 2018)
• Visual Basic Programming: A Laboratory Approach (Computer Science Press, 1996)

With Henry M. Walker, she was co-chair and co-editor of the annual symposium on computer science education of SIGCSE in 2002.^[14]

Recognition

The University of Hawaii system awarded Gersting the Regents’ Excellence in Teaching Award in 2006.^[7]