Joan Sylvia Lyttle Birman was born in New York City. She attended an all-girls' high school, then went on to Swarthmore College. She transferred to Barnard College of Columbia University, where she received her B.A. in 1948, and then earned an M.S. in physics from Columbia in 1950. That same year she married Joseph Birman, a theoretical physicist. After working for various companies that designed electronic equipment for aircraft and raising three children, Birman returned to school to pursue graduate studies at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. She received her Ph.D. in 1968 with a thesis on "Braid Groups and Their Relationship to Mapping Class Groups" . After teaching for a few years at the Stevens Institute of Technology, Birman joined the faculty at Barnard College in 1973, chairing the department in 1973-1987, 1989-1991, and 1995-1998. She is currently Research Professor Emeritus at Barnard. Birman has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) as well as other honors such as a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, 1974-76, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, 1994-1995. Her research has been in topology and knot theory in which she has written over 60 research manuscripts and 5 books. The 1996 Chauvenet Prize for expository writing was awarded to Joan Birman by the Mathematical Association of America for her article "New Points of View in Knot Theory," which appeared in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 28 (April 1993), pages 253-287. In 2005 she received the New York City Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science and Technology. SOURCE https://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/birman.htm