We created a GatheringUs memorial to celebrate the life of Diana Atanasova . Collecting your stories and memories here will offer us great comfort. Click on the heart to let us know you were here and to receive email updates. Thank you for contributing to this lasting memorial.
All of us at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics are saddened to hear of Diana’s passing. Our Chair, Professor Stevens, noted that she was an important presence in the department and Professor Szczesny... moreTo the family of Diana Atanasova
All of us at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics are saddened to hear of Diana’s passing. Our Chair, Professor Stevens, noted that she was an important presence in the department and Professor Szczesny recalls that she was a singularly kind, mature and responsible person and always a pleasure to deal with in any capacity (and for him a “fellow Eastern European soul”).
I met Diana when she first came to the department since I was organizing the Teaching Fellows. Quite quickly, Diana distinguished herself as an experienced and responsible teacher as well as a pleasure to work with. She frequently chose to teach the classes where TF’s worked in teams with large classes, which was a particular pleasure since she served as a leader and role model for both her contemporaries and the new TF’s.
When Diana asked me to be her PhD advisor, I was very pleased as I knew she was a talented and extremely hard working student. The problem she started on, a problem in Celestial Mechanics describing the motion of a planet under the influence of two stars, was a difficult but rich problem. Diana dove into the background material and it was quickly clear that her interest was in the “hard analysis’ approach to the problem. This is not my strong point so I warned Diana that while I looked forward to learning from her work, I would not be as much help as I might be in other methods. She was unperturbed by the challenge.
I met with Diana weekly. While I could tell the work was sometimes frustrating to her and she thought her progress was slow, she was always well prepared and it was clear to me that she had the skills and ability. The system of equations involved was extremely complicated and mastering them and then extracting the information on the detailed motion of the planet was a daunting task. I remember particularly Diana’s joy when, on the plane for a trip to visit her sister in England, she made an excellent discovery. She found a method to deal with the equations that, to someone with her strength in calculation and persistence, was sufficient to extract the kind of information that she was after.
The idea did not make the problem easy, but it did make it possible and Diana used all her energy and ability to write a particularly nice thesis. She continued to make progress and started using different tools to explore some implications of her work She was well on the way to writing a second thesis before I could convince her to stop, write up what she had discovered, and graduate.
Working with Diana was a great pleasure. When she finished the department seemed a much less energetic place. While I wish I could have been more help to her, Diana’s accomplishment is all the greater as he work was entirely her own and I learned a great deal from her. I know the importance of education to Diana and that finishing her PhD was a great joy for he, but her greatest pleasure, I’m sure, was sharing her success with her family.
All of us in the department share a sense of loss of someone so young and talented and the loss of someone so kind and caring. Diana’s math books will be part of the department’s permanent library and will be inscribed as donated by her. I include below a note from Professor Rohrlich, who was one of Diana’s favorites, and a note from a fellow graduate student, Lanlan Lui.
From Professor Rohrlich (math faculty):
Diana was an excellent student in my MA 713 (I recall thinking that SHE should be the one teaching the rest of the class about clever ways to do contour integrals) and I was on her quals committee. Finally I attended her thesis defense as chair which was an impressive exposure to celestial mechanics, a subject which was (and still is) one of the many areas in which I am totally ignorant. But Diana’s exposition made the subject engaging even to an ignoramus like me!
From Lanlan Lui (3rd year Ph.D. student)
I am saddened by the news, and please pass on my condolences to Diana’s family. I only met Diana once, as I was moving into the office, and she was packing her stuff after completing her Ph.D. degree.
At that time, I was frustrated by my roommate, unsure about the Ph.D. and worried about the coming preliminary exam. We talked for a few hours that afternoon, and she offered me valuable advice on both academics and life that she gathered during her years at BU.
I remembered that she assured me that things will eventually work out, as she herself had trouble finding an advisor, changed advisors and almost gave up her dissertation.
She told me that we should put in as much work as we can into our research (and never just throw away draft work thinking you are done and always document your progress), as it is easy to sit idle and do nothing. Even if our effort returned fruitless, it will not be wasted. She explained to me that she worked another job while doing her Ph.D. and it was a long and tiring experience, but she truly treasured her time here. I still remember that she believed the Ph.D. degree is bigger than math itself, and more about perseverance/mindset. She told me she enjoyed working on celestial mechanics very much!
She also showed me pictures of her quiet and cozy apartment and told me that it was possible to find a nice roommate like hers and that if I could not bear it anymore, I should just move to cut the pain quickly, which is indeed true.
Though my encounter with Diana was short, she was really a determined, caring and important person to me and I am sorry to hear of the loss.