Charlotte Barnum

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Charlotte Cynthia Barnum (born May 17, 1860 in Phillipston , Massachusetts , United States , † March 27, 1934 in Middletown , Connecticut ) was an American mathematician . She became the first woman to earn a PhD in mathematics from Yale University in 1895 .

life and work

Barnum received her education through private study and her preparation for college was at Hillhouse High School in New Haven . In 1881 she received a bachelor's degree from Vassar College in New York . She worked for the Yale University Observatory from 1883 to 1885 and in 1885 calculated angles of crystals for a revision of the System of Mineralogy by James Dwight Dana . From 1886 to 1890 and again in 1897, she worked as an editorial assistant at Webster's International Dictionary. After various teaching positions at Betts Academy in Stamford , the Hillhouse School and in 1989 at Smith College , where she taught astronomy , she studied mathematics, astronomy and physics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore from 1890 to 1892 . She then studied at Yale University, where her father had studied, and received her PhD in 1985 with a dissertation: Functions Having Lines or Surfaces of Discontinuity. She joined the American Mathematical Society in 1894, the first year after the name change from the New York Mathematical Society. After completing her PhD, she taught at Carleton College in Northfield , Minnesota for a year . In 1898 she joined the American Academy of Actuaries and worked for the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company in Springfield , Massachusetts and the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania until 1901 . In 1901 she moved to Washington, DC to work for the United States Naval Observatory . She then worked for the National Geodetic Survey until 1908 and was then an editorial assistant in the Department of Biological Surveying at the US Department of Agriculture until 1913. She left government and returned to New Haven in 1914, where she worked as an editor for the Yale Peruvian Expeditions, the Yale University Secretariat and the Yale University Press. From 1917 she worked in various organizations and academic institutions in Connecticut , New York and Massachusetts. She was involved in various social and charitable activities throughout her life. When she lived in New York, she was a member of the Joint Legislative Commission for Women and the Broadway Tabernacle, a congregational church known for its social activism.

Memberships

publication

  • 1911: The girl who lives at home: Two suggestions to trade union women. Life and Labor 1: 346.

literature

  • Judy Green, Jeanne LaDuke: Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8218-4376-5
  • David E. Zitarelli: A History of Mathematics in the United States and Canada: Volume 1: 1492–1900, 2019, ISBN 978-1-4704-4829-5
  • "Charlotte Cynthia Barnum, BA Vassar College 1881." Alumnae Graduate School Yale University: 1894-1920. New Haven: Yale University, 1920.
  • “Charlotte Cynthia Barnum, Ph.D. 1895. ” Yale Obituary Record 1933-1934.
  • Whitman, Betsey S. "Women in the American Mathematical Society before 1900." Pt. 2. AWM Newsletter 13 (Sep – Oct 1983): 7–9. * Phillip Jones. "American doctoral dissertations on mathematics and astronomy written by women in the nineteenth century," Mathematics Teacher, May 1957, p.374
  • Bailey, Martha J. American Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary, ABC-CLIO, 1994.
  • Mary Elizabeth Williams Papers. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College.
  • Yale Obituary Record

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Barnum, Charlotte
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Barnum, Charlotte Cynthia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1860
PLACE OF BIRTH Phillipston , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH March 27, 1934
Place of death Middletown , Connecticut