In 2013, Elizabeth Meckes (left) was photographed working with a student in her Differential Equations class. Photo by Annie O’Neill

Elizabeth Meckes once paused as she was giving a lecture in a graduate course. Standing at a chalkboard in Yost Hall, explaining a famous proof that had made its discoverer’s reputation, she suddenly turned to her students and said, “You know, when you leave this world, what people are going to remember about you is the work that you did.”

One of those students, Yiting Cao (CWR ’18; GRS ’20, mathematics), had taken several classes with Meckes, and she recognized the personal conviction behind her professor’s words. “She was really dedicated to her work,” Cao recalls. “You always felt she was trying very hard every second to produce something that could potentially be written in history. And she did that.”

For the past several months, the Case Western Reserve community and mathematicians around the world have affirmed Meckes’ legacy while mourning the loss, in Cao’s words, of “a brilliant soul.” Meckes died Dec. 16, 2020, a few weeks after being diagnosed with cancer, at age 40. She is survived by her husband, Mark Meckes, professor in the Department of Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Statistics, and their children, Juliette and Peter.

Meckes was a double alumna of Case Western Reserve, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics. For her doctorate, she studied with Persi Diaconis, a renowned probability theorist, at Stanford University. In a 2018 interview, Meckes described taking upper-level math as an undergraduate and realizing she had found her vocation. “You can tell when something’s clicking and something’s the right fit for you,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that it’s easy. It just means that it makes sense to you in a way that other things don’t always.”

After spending a postdoctoral year at Cornell University as an American Institute of Mathematics Fellow, Meckes joined the CWRU faculty in 2007—as did her husband, a double alumnus himself. By 2018, she had been promoted to full professor. Her publications included 28 papers, a linear algebra textbook she wrote with her husband, and a monograph, The Random Matrix Theory of the Classical Compact Groups, that was hailed as “beautiful,” “elegant” and “extraordinary.”

Meckes’ devotion to teaching was just as inspiring as her research achievements, Cao says. During office hours, she would go over difficult concepts as many times as needed and reassure her students when they doubted themselves. “It’s not supposed to be easy,” she would tell them. “It’s OK to struggle when you’re first learning about this.”

Kathryn Stewart (GRS ’19, mathematics), Meckes’ former doctoral advisee, remembers traveling to conferences with her and giving presentations—two things she would not have done without Meckes’ encouragement. “You could just tell how well known Elizabeth was,” Stewart says. “We would show up at these conferences, and everyone wanted to talk to her and get her take on what they were working on. Everyone showed up for her talks. You could tell she was very well respected among her peers.”

Stewart particularly valued Meckes as a role model and advocate for women in mathematics. In 2014, Meckes was an invited lecturer at an annual summer workshop for female mathematicians, hosted by the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She belonged to an organization of research mathematicians called Women in Probability and collaborated with its founder, Associate Professor Tai Melcher of the University of Virginia.

“I loved doing math with her; I learned a lot working with her, but mostly it was just because we had so much fun,” Melcher says. “She had a great positive energy, and the way we worked together, the way she worked, reminded me why I enjoy doing what I do.”

Meckes’ influence also extended beyond the academic world. She appeared twice, for instance, in the newsletter of a nonprofit math club for girls, Girls’ Angle, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Meckes did an extended interview with the director, C. Kenneth Fan, and later wrote an article introducing the club’s members to the laws of probability. The article was illustrated with images of coins; at her request, they were Susan B. Anthony dollars.

Meckes’ commitment to what she called “mathematical outreach” also prompted her to volunteer with the Math Corps Cleveland, an academic enrichment and mentoring program for local youth. The program’s associate director, Francisca García-Cobián Richter, is a research assistant professor at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, one of several sites where Math Corps students ordinarily gather on Saturdays during the school year.

“Elizabeth prepared and delivered beautiful lectures for middle schoolers,” Richter says. “The first time she taught, she introduced students to knot theory. I remember being impressed with what I could understand, being nervous about what I couldn’t and being thankful that she was challenging us all to think really hard!”

This spring, two international events for research mathematicians were dedicated to Meckes’ memory. One of them, co-organized by Professor Elisabeth Werner, featured a talk by Diaconis, who lectured on topics he and Meckes had worked on together. When he got to the final slide in his Zoom presentation, he acknowledged he had no answer to one of the questions he had raised.

“I know that if I would have told that to Elizabeth, she would have gotten that funny look on her face and said, ‘I’ll think about it,’” Diaconis told his virtual audience. “And she would have. I can’t ask Elizabeth. I can ask you. One way of keeping Elizabeth alive is to remember the beautiful mathematics that she did, and talk to each other about it the way she would have talked to us about it.”

The Elizabeth S. Meckes Memorial Fund, established by Elizabeth’s and Mark’s families, will support an annual lecture in the Department of Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Statistics. To donate, please visit the college’s giving website: artsci.cwru.edu/development/making-a-gift. If you use the online form, please select “other” for the designation and type in “Elizabeth S. Meckes Memorial Fund.”