Past and
Present
Influential Mathematicians
Winifred Edgerton Merrill
September 24, 1862 - September 6, 1951
Winifred Edgerton, the first American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics, was born in Ripon,
Wisconsin. She was a direct descendent of Elder William Brewster of Plymouth Colony. She received her
early education from private tutors before earning her B.A. degree from Wellesley College in 1883. After
some work at Harvard she was allowed to study mathematics and astronomy at Columbia University. At
the end of her second year she petitioned to receive a Ph.D. degree, having fulfilled the required credits and
written an original thesis that dealt with geometric interpretations of multiple integrals and translations and
relations of various systems of coordinates. Her work in mathematical astronomy included computation of
the orbit of the comet of 1883. Despite the support of President Barnard, a campaigner for women's
education, the board of trustees refused her application. Barnard suggested that Edgerton personally talk to
each trustee. This effort proved successful and at the next meeting the board unanimously voted to award
her the Ph.D. in mathematics, which she received in 1886 with highest honors. On the fiftieth anniversary
of her graduation from Wellesley, a portrait of Winifred Edgerton Merrill was presented to Columbia and
now hangs in one of the academic buildings with the inscription, "She opened the door." Merrill was also a
member of a committee that petitioned Columbia University for the founding of Barnard College in 1889,
New York's first secular institution to award women the liberal arts degree.
Charlotte Angas Scott
June 8, 1858 - November 10, 1931
Challenging an era where women struggled to obtain a foot hold in the elite and educated
coterie, Charlotte Angas Scott overcame society's disapproval by emerging as one of
England's first women to obtain a doctorate in mathematics. The late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries encompassed an era in which society viewed the woman's place to be
in the home. However, Charlotte Scott felt the importance of seeking equality for women,
and she was able to accomplish her endeavor faced with a lifetime of challenge.
Successful in her aspirations, she is considered to be a pioneer for advancement of
women's role in the field of mathematics.
Dame Mary Lucy Cartwright
December 17, 1900 - April 3, 1998
Mary Cartwright was born on December 17, 1900 in Aynho, Northamptonshire, England. She graduated
from the University of Oxford in 1923, having attained a First in mathematics in only the second year that
women were allowed to take Final degrees at Oxford. After teaching mathematics in the schools for four
years, she returned to Oxford in 1928 for her D.Phil in mathematics under the supervision of G. H. Hardy
and E. C. Titchmarsh, receiving the degree in 1930. Her thesis was on "The Zeros of Integral Functions of
Special Types." After finishing at Oxford, Cartwright obtained a Yarrow Research Fellowship at Girton
College, Cambridge University, where she continued her work on the theory of functions. In 1935 she was
appointed a lecturer in mathematics at Cambridge. She held the position of University Lecturer from 1935
until 1959, and then Reader in Theory of Functions from 1959 until her retirement in 1968. During this
time she was on the staff of Girton College, serving as Director of Studies in Mathematics and then as
Mistress of Girton College from 1949 to 1968.
Sun-Yung Alice Chang
March 24, 1948 -
Sun-Yung Alice Chang was born in Ci-an, China. In 1970 she received her B.S. degree from the National
University of Taiway. She came to the United States to pursue graduate studies in mathematics at the
University of California, Berkeley, earning her Ph.D in 1974. Chang spent one year at the State University
of New York at Buffalo, then became Hedrick Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the Univesity of
California, Los Angeles, during 1975-77. She then taught at the University of Maryland for three years
before returning to the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1980 as an associate professor, later
promoted to full professor.
Chang's research interests are in the fields of nonlinear partial differential equations and isospectral
geometry. In 1995 she was awarded the Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics for "her deep contributions
to the study of partial differential equations on Riemannian manifolds and in particular for her work on
extremal problems in spectral geometry and the compactness of isospectral metrics within a fixed
conformal class on a compact 3-manifold."
David Blackwell
When he was 22, David Blackwell earned a
Ph.D. (University of Illinois, 1941) within 5
years of high school. As only Black
institutions with very high teaching loads
(20 to 30 hours per week as opposed to the
standard 6 hours of today) would hire him,
one would think his early career would lag
somewhat. Although his work caught the
eye of great mathematicians of the time, it
took another 13 years and 20 papers before
Blackwell was hired permanently at a
research oriented institution, the University
of California at Berkeley. By the time he
was 40 (in 1959), David Blackwell had
accomplished that which most
mathematicians would consider a lifetime's
work, he had written a book considered a
classic, published 35 papers, and had been
an invited speaker all over the world. In
1965 he became the first African
American named to the National
Academy of Sciences (he is still the only
Black mathematician to be so honored). In
1979 Blackwell won the von Neumann
Theory Prize (the Operations Research
Society of America). Though most (but not
all) of Blackwell's work was in Statistics,
his work exhibits a strong
"theoretical"mathematics background.
EUCLID
Euclid (Greek: Eucleides) is one of the most prominent and influential mathematicians of Greco-Roman
antiquity, acclaimed for his standardising of Greek mathematics. Regrettably, little is known of the origins
and life of this great scholar. It is said he was born in the city of Alexandria, Egypt around 330B.C.. After
receiving his education at Plato's Acadamy in Athens, Greece, Euclid is believed to have been invited by
King Ptolemy I Soter to teach at his newly founded university in Alexandria. There, Eiclid established his
own mathematics school.
History imparts that the ancient Greeks contributed a great deal to the world of Mathematics. Thier
influence an discovery are apparent in any field of mathematical study. Evidently, Euclid was no exception
in contributing towards this history of involvement in mathematics. One of the most outstanding
achievements of the Ancient Greeks was the construction of a deductive system of Geometry, culminated
in theorems-some of which are still and important part of modern mathematics. Euclid's fame comes from
his writings, the best known of which are his treatise entitled, "The Elements".
"The Elements" gathered together the whole field of elementary Geometry and Arithmetic that had
developed in the two centuries before Euclid. Composed around 275B.C, this series of thirteen books stated
the fundamentals of the deductive system of Geometry to which the Ancient Greeks were accredited,
We still, however, remain uncertain as to how much or if any of the work in "The Elements" is Euclid's
own material. His writings are compiled mostly from the discoveries of previous mathematicians. Included
in these are Hippocrates of Chios, Pythagoras, Thales and Euxodus.
Albert Einstein
1879 - 1955
After 1905, Einstein continued working in all three of his works in the 1905 papers. He made important
contributions to the quantum theory, but increasingly he sought to extend the special theory of relativity to
phenomena involving acceleration. The key to an elaboration emerged in 1907 with the principle of
equivalence, in which gravitational acceleration was held a priori indistinguishable from acceleration
caused by mechanical forces; gravitational mass was therefore identical with inertial mass. Einstein
elevated this identity, which is implicit in the work of Isaac Newton, to a guiding principle in his attempts
to explain both electromagnetic and gravitational acceleration according to one set of physical laws. In
1907 he proposed that if mass were equivalent to energy, then the principle of equivalence required that
gravitational mass would interact with the apparent mass of electromagnetic radiation, which includes light.
By 1911, Einstein was able to make preliminary predictions about how a ray of light from a distant star,
passing near the Sun, would appear to be attracted, or bent slightly, in the direction of the Sun's mass. At
the same time, light radiated from the Sun would interact with the Sun's mass, resulting in a slight change
toward the infrared end of the Sun's optical spectrum. At this juncture Einstein also knew that any new
theory of gravitation would have to account for a small but persistent anomaly in the perihelion motion of
the planet Mercury.
Credit must be given to the following websites:
http://www.humboldt1.com/~gralsto/einstein/scien.html
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/98/980417.calderon.shtml
http://members.tripod.com/Turkler/euclid.html
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/madgreatest.html
http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/women.htm