Anna Helen Tappan

Anna Helen Tappan (born October 22, 1888 in Mount Pleasant (Iowa) , † November 10, 1971 in Hamilton (Ohio) ) was an American mathematician and university teacher.

Life and research

Tappan was born the ninth of eleven children of Anna (Grand-Girard) and David Stanton Tappan , who was President of Miami University in Oxford (Ohio) from 1899 to 1902 . In 1905 she graduated from Everts High School in Circleville, Ohio, and then attended the Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. In 1909 she completed her studies with a bachelor's degree with distinction and became a trainer there. She studied at Cornell University in 1911 and received her master's degree in mathematics with a minor in mathematical physics in 1912. She then taught there until 1913 and was an Erastus Brooks Fellow from 1913 to 1914. She did her doctorate in 1914 with Virgil Snyder with the dissertation: Plane sextic curves invariant under birational transformations. She then was a faculty instructor at Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanics (now Iowa State University ) until 1918, was assistant professor from 1918 to 1922 and associate professor until 1925. In 1925 she returned to the Western College for Women as a professor of mathematics. From 1927 to 1941 she was dean for women and academic dean from 1941 to 1944. From 1957 to 1958 she was deputy head of the mathematics department. The Western College honored her in 1953 as one of the ten outstanding living alumnae and in 1954 again with an honorary doctorate from Humane Letters. In 1990, a peer learning center called the Anna Helen Tappan Center for Computer Aided Learning was set up with tutors called Tappan tutors. After her retirement, she lived in South Pasadena, California. The Helen Tappan Memorial Fund was established in Western College.

Memberships

• American Mathematical Society
• Mathematical Association of America (MAA)
• American Association of University Women (AAUW)
• American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
• Sigma Delta Epsilon
• National Association for Women in Education
• American Association of University Professors
• Sigma Xi
• Pi Mu Epsilon

Publications (selection)

• 1915 Plane sextic curves invariant under birational transformations. Amer. J. Math. 37: 309-36.

literature

• Jacqueline Johnson: Western College for Women, 2014, ISBN 978-1439642733
• W. Fr. Meyer, H. Mohrmann: Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences with inclusion of their applications
• Judy Green, Jeanne LaDuke: Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's. 2009, ISBN 978-0-8218 4376-5 .
• Narka Nelson: The Western College for Women; Oxford, OH: Western College, 1967.

Web links

• Anna Helen Tappan in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)
• Biography at AMS