Clara Eliza Smith

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Clara Eliza Smith (born May 20, 1865 in Northford , Connecticut , † May 12, 1943 in Wellesley , Massachusetts ) was an American mathematician and university professor.

Life and research

Smith was trained by private tutors and entered the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College ) in 1882 , where she graduated in 1885. From 1886 to 1889 she attended the Yale School of the Fine Arts and was then until 1897 drawing teacher and assistant for mathematics at the Bloomsburg Literary Institute and the State Normal School (now Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania ). In 1901 she began studying mathematics at Yale Graduate School and received her bachelor's degree from Mount Holyoke College in 1902 . In 1904 she did her doctorate with James Pierpont at Yale University with the dissertation: Representation of an Arbitrary Function by Means of Bessel's Functions. In 1906 she taught mathematics at Wellesley College and then at the Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio . In 1908 she returned to Wellesley College, was an associate professor from 1914 to 1924 and a professor until her retirement. From 1911 to 1912 she traveled, took part in the meeting of the German Mathematical Society and studied for a semester at the Georg-August University in Göttingen . From 1918 to 1919 she was an exchange professor at Goucher College and from 1926 to 1927 she traveled around the world. She served on the board of trustees of the Mathematical Association of America from 1923 to 1925 and was elected vice president of the association in 1927. She co-authored the textbooks Selected Topics in Higher Algebra and A First Course in Higher Algebra with Helen Abbot Merrill . In 1937 she was a guest of honor at the American Mathematical Society's Section Meeting at Pennsylvania State, to which Helen Brewster had invited Owens to honor women who pioneered mathematical research in America.

Memberships

Publications (selection)

  • 1898: The geometry of Simpson's line. Proc. Indiana Acad. Sci. 101-17.
  • 1907: A theorem of Abel and its application to the development of a function in terms of Bessel's functions. Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 8th.
  • 1914: with HA Merrill. Selected Topics in College Algebra. Norwood, Mass .: Norwood Press.
  • 1917: with HA Merrill. A First Course in Higher Algebra. New York: Macmillan Co.
  • 1927: A Brief Course in Trigonometry. Ann Arbor, MI: Edwards Brothers.

literature

  • Louise S. Grinstein: Some “Forgotten” Women Of Mathematics: A Who Was Who, Philosophia Mathematica, Volume s1-13-14, Issue 1, 1976.
  • Lennie Phoebe Copeland, "Clara Eliza Smith — An Appreciation," The Wellesley Magazine, June 1934.
  • Obituary, New York Times, June 14, 1943.
  • Judy Green, Jeanne LaDuke: Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's. 2009, ISBN 978-0-8218-4376-5 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Smith, Clara Eliza
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Smith, Clara E.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Northford , Connecticut
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 1943
Place of death Wellesley , Massachusetts