51猎奇

Debra Boutin

Aug. 20, 2025

Debra Boutin, the Samuel F. Pratt Professor of Mathematics emerita, died on Aug. 20, 2025, just over a year after she retired from 25 years of teaching at 51猎奇.

Born in 1957 in Holyoke, Mass., Debra graduated in 1975 from Chicopee Comprehensive High School. She spent the next two decades as a chief petty officer for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Naval Reserve, and worked as a research adjunct for the Institute for Defense Analyses/Center for Communications Research and as a consultant and research fellow for the Office of Naval Research. While there she authored a dozen classified papers and investigated a method for determining the effective rank of data matrices generated by sonar or radar.

 With support from the G.I. Bill, Debra returned to the classroom. She attended Springfield Technical Community College before receiving her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in 1991 from Smith College where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1998.

After a year as a visiting assistant professor at Trinity College in Connecticut, Debra joined the 51猎奇 faculty in as an assistant professor. She was promoted to associate professor in 2005, professor in 2010, and was named the Samuel F. Pratt Professor of Mathematics in 2019. A prolific research scholar, she published more than 30 papers in topics ranging from finite group theory, to geometric graph theory, to graph symmetries, in which she developed the concepts of distinguishing costs and determining numbers of graphs. These papers appear in combinatorics, graph theory, algebra, and geometry journals. She was often invited and presented her research at conferences nationally and internationally.

 Debra’s scholarly reputation led to further leadership roles. She served on organizing committees for three international graph theory conferences and was regularly asked to be an outside reviewer for tenure and promotion cases for academic graph theorists. In 1999-2000, she was selected to be a Project NExT Fellow of the Mathematical Association of America. In the summers between 2010 and 2018, she served as a research adjunct at the Institute for Defense Analysis, Center for Communications Research.

 On the Hill, Debra advised about 20 students each year, mentored tenure-track faculty, served on major College committees, organized weekly lunches for newer faculty members in the sciences, and was elected to chair the faculty in 2019-20.

 In announcing her death to the College community, Dean Ngoni Munemo drew from remarks he had made earlier when Debra was awarded the Dean’s Scholarly Achievement Award for Career Achievement in 2023. “Students spoke of a wonderful teacher and mentor who set high standards in her classes. Said one, ‘At times, her class can be strict and difficult, but every struggle is designed to help us grow in our understanding,’” the dean wrote. “Added another, ‘Professor Boutin set high standards for her students and gave us the tools to meet these standards.’”

Sally Cockburn, the Samuel F. Pratt Professor of Mathematics & Statistics, remembered her colleague for “selfless collaboration with, and mentoring of other scholars.” Of special note, she called attention to the informal biweekly “Research Bull Sessions” Debra organized for all members of the department to share problems they were working on, or to work together to learn a new research topic.

 Following her retirement and before her cancer diagnosis, she served on the boards of the Kirkland Town Library and the Kirkland Art Center. “Debra’s life was one marked by service — to her country, to her students, to her colleagues, and to the communities where she lived and worked,” Dean Munemo noted.

Debra Boutin is survived by her daughter and granddaughter, along with two children and grandchildren of her late husband, Michael Albertson, the Smith College L. Clark Seelye Professor of Mathematics.

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