Irene Price

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Irene Price (born January 16, 1902 in Rensselaer , Indiana , † March 13, 1999 in Alamogordo , New Mexico ) was an American mathematician and university professor.

Life and research

Price was born the second of five children near Rensselaer, Indiana. From 1915 to 1919 she attended high school in Rensselaer and taught at a primary school in Rensselaer for the next four years. 1921 graduated from Indiana State Normal School (now Indiana State University ). She received her bachelor's degree in 1926 and was a part-time teacher in Indiana from 1926 to 1929. In 1927 she received a Clara Javen Goodbody Scholarship and obtained her Masters degree. An article with the same title as that of her master's thesis appeared in the American Mathematical Monthly 1928. In 1932 she received her doctorate and was a member of Pi Lambda Theta and Kappa Delta Pi, Sigma Xi and Phi Beta Sigma. During her time in Indiana, she also worked on a spreadsheet project under the direction of Harold Thayer Davis , published as a two-volume work in 1933 and 1935. After graduation, she worked in three different professional fields. She was a college professor for fifteen years, then worked as a statistician for the United States Air Force for a dozen years, eventually being a self-employed real estate agent for more than 40 years. From 1929 to 1944 she was a professor of mathematics at Oshkosh Teachers College (now University of Wisconsin Oshkosh ). In addition to membership in various professional associations, she was active in the Wisconsin Section of the MAA and the AAUW, for which she was President of the Oshkosh Branch. From 1944 to 1949 she worked as a statistician for the headquarters of the Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base , Ohio . Here she co-authored a technical report and taught several evening classes in college mathematics in Dayton, Ohio and at Miami University in nearby Oxford, Ohio . Then she headed the mathematical research on guided missiles on the Holloman Air Force base in Alamogordo until 1953 . She then did research as a mathematician at White Sands Proving Ground until 1956 . In these positions, she wrote various technical reports on data reduction. In 1956 she became the owner of Price Realty, was the district director of the New Mexico Realtors Association and a member of the National Association of Realtors. In 1971 she taught a college course in real estate practice at Holloman Air Force Base, and in 1998 she retired from the real estate business.

Memberships

Publications (selection)

  • 1928: Laplace's calculus of generatrix functions. Amer. Math. Monthly 35: 228-35.
  • 1935: Concerning a special type of polynomial. Amer. Math. Monthly 42.
  • 1942: I doubt it - a mathematical card game. Amer. Math. Monthly 49: 117.
  • 1948: with MA Schneiderman: Use of sampling for verifying IBM cards. Project CAM-14, Analysis Office, Comptroller's Department, Headquarters of the Air Materiel Command, Dayton, OH. April. Restricted distribution.
  • 1950: Location of target boards for cinetheodolites at Holloman Air Force Base, NM Holloman Air Force Base, NM.
  • 1950: The rectangular coordinate system for Holloman Air Force Base. Holloman Air Force Base, NM. Restricted distribution.
  • 1952: with CA Bodwell: A reduction procedure for the Douglas FEI equipment. Report no. MTHT 213, Holloman Air Force Base, NM, May. Restricted distribution.
  • 1952: with WG Holland: Determination of yaw and pitch of a missile from photographs. Report No. 2, Technical Staff, Holloman Air Force Base, NM. Restricted distribution.
  • 1953: with CA Bodwell: Accuracy requirements of timing for cinetheodolites. White Sands Proving Ground, NM. December. Restricted distribution.
  • 1953: with CA Bodwell: Theoretical evaluation of the capabilities of the Miran instrumentation system. Holloman Air Force Base, NM. February. Restricted distribution.
  • 1955: with CA Bodwell: Tables of the derivatives of the orthogonal polynomials. White Sands Proving Ground, NM. May. Restricted distribution.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Price, Irene
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Rensselaer , Indiana
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 1999
Place of death Alamogordo , New Mexico