Dolores spikes

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Dolores Margaret Richard Spikes , née Dolores Margaret Richard (born August 24, 1936 in Baton Rouge , Louisiana ; died June 1, 2015 there ) was an American mathematician and university director.

Life

Early years and math career

Spikes was born to Lawrence Granville Richard and Margaret Patterson Richard. Though neither of her parents had ever attended college, they were very concerned about getting her and her sisters to college despite their tight budget. After Spikes first attended church and private schools in Baton Rouge, she studied mathematics from 1954 at Southern University . She was inducted into the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority ; She also attended a literature course, where she met her future husband Hermon Spikes.

After graduating from Southern University in 1957 with a bachelor's degree summa cum laude , she moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , from where she received a master's degree the following year . She then taught science for three years at a high school in Mossville in Calcasieu Parish , Louisiana.

In 1961 Spikes returned to her alma mater in Baton Rouge, where she initially received an assistant position. There she received her doctorate in 1971 under the supervision of Jack Ohm with a thesis on the theory of commutative rings . She was the first African American woman to earn a Ph. D. in mathematics from Louisiana State University . The title of her dissertation was Semivaluations and Groups of Divisibility .

University administration

In the following years she rose steadily in the hierarchy of the Southern University. She gave lectures for both beginners and advanced students before turning increasingly to administrative tasks in the 1980s. From 1982 she served as assistant to the chancellor of Southern University before being named vice chancellor in 1985. In 1987 she became university chancellor, initially for a year at Southern University at New Orleans and then again in Baton Rouge until 1992. She was also elected President of the Southern University System in 1988. She was the first African American to preside over a university in Louisiana and the first woman to lead a US university system as president.

From 1987 she was on the board of directors of the Institute for Education Management at Harvard University . In 1994, Bill Clinton appointed her to the National Advisory Board on African American Historical Colleges and Universities , and two years later she was appointed vice chairman of the Kellogg Commission , which was to advise the future of public universities in the United States.

Spikes left Southern University in 1996 and moved the following year to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne, Maryland , of which she was President until 2001, when she ended her professional career for health reasons.

Ebony magazine named her one of the "20 Most Influential Black Women in America" ​​in 1990.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Obituary on nytimes.com , accessed on February 21, 2017
  2. ↑ a b c d e biography on math.buffalo.edu , accessed on February 21, 2017
  3. ↑ a b biography on maa.org , accessed on February 21, 2017
  4. ↑ Biography on thehistorymakers.com , accessed February 21, 2017
  5. ↑ a b Obituary on theadvocate.com , accessed on February 21, 2017
  6. ↑ Obits.theadvocate.com , accessed on February 21, 2017
  7. ^ Entry in the Mathematics Genealogy Project , accessed on February 21, 2017
  8. ↑ Biography on umes.edu , accessed on February 21, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Spikes, Dolores
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Richard Spikes, Dolores Margaret (full name); Richard, Dolores Margaret (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician and university director
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Baton Rouge , Louisiana
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 2015
Place of death Baton Rouge , Louisiana