Etta Zuber Falconer

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Etta Zuber Falconer (born November 21, 1933 in Tupelo , Mississippi , † September 19, 2002 in Atlanta , Georgia ) was an American mathematician and university professor .

Life and research

Zuber Falconer was born the younger of two daughters of the musician Zadie Montgomery and the doctor Walter Zuber. She attended the Tupelo public school system and graduated from Carver High School (Tupelo, Mississippi) in 1949 . She then studied mathematics with chemistry as a minor at Fisk University in Nashville , Tennessee . Here she was tutored by Evelyn Boyd Granville , one of the first two African American women to receive a PhD. During her studies she was accepted into the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa and graduated in 1953 with summa cum laude. In 1954 she received a master’s degree and then accepted an apprenticeship at Okolona College in Okolona, ​​Mississippi . While she was teaching there, she met her future husband Dolan Falconer, with whom she had three children. She taught at Okolona Junior College until 1963, when she began taking summer courses towards the end of that period. In the summers 1962 to 1965 she attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and spent the academic year 1964-65 at the Teacher Training Institute of the National Science Foundation at the University of Illinois-Champaign. After leaving the Okolona Junior College, she continued to teach and took for the academic year 1963/64 an apprenticeship at Howard High School in Chattanooga (Tennessee) to before 1965 as an instructor at Spelman College in Atlanta , Georgia , was appointed . Her mother had already studied at this college, which was unusual at the time. Zuber Falconer received his PhD in 1969 from Emory University under Trevor Evans with the dissertation: Quasi Group Identities Invariant under Isotopy. In 1971 she was appointed to the mathematics department at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia . After spending the 1971/72 academic year there, she returned to Spelman College as Professor of Mathematics and Head of the Mathematics Department. In 1982 she became director of the science department and in 1990 she became Fuller E Calloway Professor of Mathematics and Director of Science Programs and Policy at Spelman College. To help build a computer science department while running the math department at Spelman College, she returned to Atlanta University graduate school and earned a Masters of Science degree in computer science in 1982 . She was the founder of the National Association of Mathematicians (NAM), which represents the cause of black students and mathematicians. She also founded the Atlanta Minority Women in Science Network. She received the National Association of Mathematicians 'Distinguished Service Award in 1994, the Association for Women in Mathematics' 1995 Louis Hay Award for contributions to mathematics teaching, the Quality Education for Minorities Network's 1996 Giants in Science Award, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Wisconsin at Madison . In 2001 she received the American Association for the Advancement of Science Lifetime Mentor Award. In 1995, she received $ 9.1 million from NASA for the Model Institutions for Excellence program to improve the college's science and math infrastructure, award scholarships, and the number and quality of science, engineering, and math graduates to increase. She retired as Professor Emerita in May 2002 and died in September 2002 of complications from pancreatic cancer .

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personal data
SURNAME Zuber Falconer, Etta
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Tupelo , Mississippi
DATE OF DEATH September 19, 2002
Place of death Atlanta , Georgia