April 26, 1935 – July 6, 2021
As she worked her way through the ranks of academia during the 1960s and ’70s, Sheila Tobias kept noticing something: Female students seemed to avoid studying math and science.
Tobias, who authored more than 10 books related to math anxiety as well as the military and feminism, spent nearly half of her life researching women’s anxiety toward pursuing math and science fields. An outspoken feminist activist, Tobias lived the last 40 years of her life in Tucson, where she pursued her research, advocated for women’s equality and often left an impression on the people she met.