Cavagnaro graduated from Santa Clara University in 1987 and completed her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1995. Her doctoral dissertation, A Homotopy Reciprocity Law for Ribbon Disc Complements, concerned homotopy in low-dimensional topology, and was supervised by Robert F. Craggs. In it, she credits Paul Halmos for, as she puts it, ordering her to go to graduate school.

Meanwhile, she joined the mathematics faculty of Sewanee: The University of the South in 1993. She has served as chair of the mathematics department at Sewanee and introduced mathematics courses relating to her aviation interests, on topics including aerodynamics and the use of differential equations to model physical phenomena.

In 2001, Cavagnaro and William T. Haight II co-edited the Dictionary of Classical and Theoretical Mathematics, published by the CRC Press as the third volume of their Comprehensive Dictionary of Mathematics book series.

One of Catherine’s specialties is dispelling common aviation myths. In today’s episode, we dig into a number of things including her time at the University of Tennessee Space Institute and some commonly held aviation myths.

In This Episode 

• 3:51 - What is longitudinal stability?
• 13:39 - Why icing conditions deserve our respect and how to handle them
• 15:30 - Catherine’s career in mathematics
• 24:55 - Equal transit theory myths and facts
• 36:14 - Busting common myths about takeoff
• 40:01 - Catherine’s experience with the upset training
• 53:32 - Current projects Catherine is working on