Cathleen Synge Morawetz (1923 - ) Canadian-American mathematician, author and educator, best known for her work on equations pertaining to shock waves.

Born in Toronto of mathematician John Synge and a housewife. After graduating from the University of Toronto and MIT, she got a job at Bell Laboratories thanks to her father’s connections. She edited Supersonic Flow and Shock Waves by Richard Courant and Kurt Friedrichs. She also did contract work for the United States Navy. After the war, she became an American citizen and married chemist Herbert Morawetz, taking his name and bearing him a daughter. In 1984, Cathleen Morawetz was appointed director of the Courant Institute of Mathematics, becoming the first woman ever to be director of a mathematics institute in the United States.