Emma Whiton McDonald

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Emma Whiton McDonald (born August 3, 1886 in Brooklyn , New York , † July 7, 1948 in California ) was an American mathematician and university professor.

Life and research

Whiton McDonald was born Emma Kirtland Whiton in Brooklyn, New York and graduated from Centennial High School in Pueblo, Colorado in 1904. She taught there for a year and then studied at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where she earned her bachelor's degree in 1909 . She then returned to Centennial High School, where she taught until 1916. In 1916 she received her Masters degree from the University of California under the direction of John Hector McDonald. From 1918 to 1923 she was a professor of mathematics at the University of Redlands in southern California and then a year and a half professor at Mills College . In 1924 she married John Hector McDonald. She used the name Mrs. JH McDonald in the MAA membership lists in the late 1920s, and from 1933 to 1934 she used the name Mrs. Kirtland McDonald, under which she also published her dissertation in 1934. It appears that she and JH McDonald lived separately until 1930 and then divorced because he married Sophia Levy in 1944, a member of Berkeley's math faculty who has a PhD in astronomy. In 1933 she did her doctorate with Derrick Norman Lehmer at the University of California with the dissertation: Magic Cubes Which Are Uniform Step Cubes. The last entries in the MAA registers for Ms. Kirtland McDonald were in a Los Angeles hotel between 1933 and 1934 and with an unknown address between 1935 and 1936. She worked as a real estate agent in Southern California for several years and lived in San Marino and South Pasadena .

Memberships

Publications (selection)

  • 1926 Determination of the reducible cases of the fixed center of three-bar motion. Amer. Math. Monthly 33.
  • 1931 Magic cubes which are uniform step cubes. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 37.
  • 1934 Magic cubes which are uniform step cubes. Univ. California Publ. Math. 2.

literature

  • 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 Whiton McDonald, Emma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kirtland Whiton, Emma (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH August 3, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York
DATE OF DEATH July 7, 1948
Place of death California