Background
She was born in Cape Town, South Africa.
She was born in Cape Town, South Africa.
Her family moved to Wisconsin in 1949, and she graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1966 after three years of study. In 1971 Wiegand earned her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Her dissertation was titled Galois Theory of Essential Expansions of Modules and Vanishing Tensor Powers. In 1987 she became a full professor at the University of Nebraska. At the time Wiegand was the only female professor in the math department.
In 1988 Sylvia headed a search committee for two new jobs in the math department, for which two women were hired, although one stayed only a year and another left after four years.
Grace Chisholm Young was the first woman to earn a Doctor of Philosophy in any discipline from a German university. Hers was in mathematics, and her thesis was titled "Algebraisch-gruppentheoretische Untersuchungen zur sphärischen Trigonometrie" (Algebraic Groups of Spherical Trigonometry)
From 1997 until 2000, Wiegand was President of the Association for Women in Mathematics.
Wiegand is featured in the book Notable Women in Mathematics: A Biographical Dictionary, edited by Charlene Morrow and Teri Perl, published in 1998. In May 2005, the University of Nebraska hosted the Nebraska Commutative Algebra Conference: WiegandFest "in celebration of the many important contributions of Sylvia and Roger Wiegand."
In 2012 she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
American Mathematical Society.