Judita Cofman
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Judita Cofman (1936–2001) was a Yugoslav-German mathematician, the first person to earn a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Novi Sad. She was known for her work in finite geometry and for her books aimed at young mathematicians.[1][2][3]
Cofman was born on 4 June 1936 to a prominent ethnically German but Hungarian-speaking family (variously spelled Cofman or Zoffmann) in Vršac, then in Yugoslavia and now part of Serbia. Her father was a brewer, but the family brewery (founded in 1859) was closed by the occupying Germans in World War II and then nationalized by the newly-established communist government of Yugoslavia in 1946. Her grandfather was a mathematics teacher, and her uncle was the town mayor.[1][2] Growing up in Vršac, Cofman learned Hungarian, Serbian, German, Russian, English, and later French and Italian; her facility with languages became useful for her mathematics studies.[2]
In 1954, she joined the first cohort of mathematics students in the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad, now part of the University of Novi Sad. She finished her studies there in 1958 and became a high school mathematics teacher in Zrenjanin.[1][2][3] She returned to Novi Sad (newly founded as a university) in 1960, as an assistant to geometer Mileva Prvanović and in the same year was responsible for the university's first mathematics publication, of her lecture notes on straightedge and compass constructions. She traveled to Rome in 1961 to work with Lucio Lombardo-Radice then, returning to Novi Sad in 1963, defended her Ph.D., the first mathematical doctorate at Novi Sad.[1][2] Her dissertation was O konačnim nedezargovim ravnima generisanim četvorotemenikom [Finite Non-Desarguesian Planes Generated by Quadrangles].[4]
