-
Euphemia Lofton Haynes
1st African American Mathematician.In 1930, Haynes received a masters degree in education from the University of Chicago, where she also did further graduate study in mathematics.She earned a doctorate degree in mathematics from Catholic University of America (CUA) in 1943, becoming the first black woman to receive a Ph.D. degree in mathematics. -
Majorie Lee Browne
She briefly taught at Gilbert Academy in New Orleans.She earned her M.S. in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1939, then joined the Wiley College faculty in Marshall, Texas, and started working on her doctorate in Michigan during summers. Doctor Browne went to North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University) where she taught mathematics after graduating from Michigan University. -
Evelyn Boyd Granville
Inspired by her high school teachers and with the encouragement of her family and teachers, Granville entered Smith College with a small partial scholarship from Phi Delta Kappa, a national sorority for black women.During the summers, she returned to Washington to work at the National Bureau of Standards. After her freshman year, she lived in a cooperative house at Smith, sharing chores rather than paying more expensive dormitory rates.She graduated summa cum laude in 1945 and was elected to Phi -
Vivienne Malone Mayes
Vivienne Malone Mayes earned the B.A. (1952) and M.A .(1954) in Mathematics at Fisk University. . Her intense struggle to overcome racism in order to study mathematics at the University of Texas.In 1966, Dr. Mayes became the first Black faculty member at Baylor University, the institution which had rejected her, with an explicit anti-black policy, as a student only five years previously. -
Etta Zuber Falconer
She attended Fisk University, graduating summa sum laude with a major in mathematics and a minor in chemistry (1953). She was also inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Immediately following graduation from college, she attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison where she earned the MS degree in Mathematics (1954).Dr. Falconner was taught and inspired by Evelyn Boyd Granville and Lee Lorch -
Gloria Conyers
Gloria Conyers received her A.B. in Mathematics from Fisk University (1956). She earned her M.S. (1960) and became the seventh African American woman to her Ph.D.From 1964 to 1972, Dr. Gloria Hewitt was a visiting lecturer for the Mathematical Association of America. Then, for 1972 to 1975, she served on the executive council for the mathematical honor society, Pi Mu Epsilon. -
Geraldine Darden
Darden attended the segregated Black public schools of her county, and was a very good student. However, the only career which she thought open to her was that of a high school teacher. So after she graduated from Hampton Institute she began high school teaching. -
Genevieve Knight
Genevieve Madeline Knight grew up in the South and both of her sisters became math and science teachers. After the Russians orbited the first satellite (1956), Sputnik, the government put vast amouts of money to science and mathematics education. Knight chose mathematics "because it had fewer labs than any of the sciences." -
Fern Y. Hunt
Fern Hunt was born to Daphne Lindsay and Thomas Edward Hunt. Neither of her parents were mathematically inclined. She has one sister, Erica Hunt, who is a published poet and writer. Her grandparents immigrated to the United States from Jamaica prior to World War I. Essentially Jamaica at that time was a British colony that was stratified by color, and so they came to the States looking for more opportunities. At this time there was a large West Indian migration into the city.
Her father did not -
Gloria Ford
Gloria Ford earned a B.S. in mathematics from Morgan State University where she was a student of Clarence Stephens. Then she earned an M.A. in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and taught it six different HBCUs. After marriage and children an working outside of the university for a few years, Gloria Ford Gilmer earned a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from Marquette University. She has taught in the public schools and at several colleges and universities.
