Mary Emily Sinclair

Mary Emily Sinclair (born September 27, 1878 in Worcester (Massachusetts) , United States , † June 3, 1955 in Belfast (Maine) ) was an American mathematician and university teacher. She was the first woman to graduate from the University of Chicago in 1908 and the 7th American to earn a doctorate in mathematics.

life and work

Sinclair graduated from Worcester Classical High School in 1896 and then attended Oberlin College . After her bachelor's degree in 1900, she was accepted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society and was an assistant teacher in Hartford , Connecticut until 1901 . She then studied at the University of Chicago and received her master's degree in 1903. In 1903 she taught at Lake Erie College in Painesville , Ohio . From 1903 to 1904 she was a scholarship holder at the University of Chicago. From 1905 to 1908 she did research at the University of Nebraska and in 1908 she was the first woman to do her PhD in mathematics under Oskar Bolza at the University of Chicago with the dissertation: On a Compound Discontinuous Solution Connected with the Surface of Revolution of Minimum Area. After her doctorate, she was appointed associate professor, in 1925 full professor and in 1941 Clark professor of mathematics at Oberlin College. She never married, but adopted a daughter in 1914 and a son in 1915. From 1922 to 1923 she continued her mathematical research at the University of Chicago and Cornell University with a Julia CG Piatt grant from the American Association of University Women. She spent further sabbatical years at the University of Rome and the Sorbonne. From 1927 to 1928 she was on leave of absence from the University of Miami at Coral Gables , Florida , and from 1935 from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton , New Jersey . After her retirement, she taught mathematics to Navy students at Berea College , Kentucky . She was a founding member of the Mathematical Association of America .

Memberships

• American Mathematical Society
• Mathematical Association of America
• American Association for the Advancement of Science
• American Association of University Women
• Phi Beta Kappa
• Sigma Xi

Publications (selection)

• 1907: On the Minimum Surface of Revolution in the Case of One Variable End Point . In: Annals of Mathematics . tape 8 , no. 4 . Princeton April 1907, p. 177-188 , doi : 10.2307 / 1967823 , JSTOR : i307130 (English).
• 1908: The Absolute Minimum in the Problem of the Surface of Revolution of Minimum Area . In: Annals of Mathematics . tape 9 , no. 4 . Princeton July 1908, p. 151-155 , doi : 10.2307 / 1967160 , JSTOR : 1967160 (English).
• 1908: Discriminantal Surface for the Quintic in the Normal Form u5 + 10xu3 + 5yu + z = 0. Published by Martin Schilling, Halle, Germany.
• 1909: Concerning a Compound Discontinuous Solution in the Problem of the Surface of Revolution of Minimum Area . In: Annals of Mathematics . tape 10 , no. 2 . Princeton January 1909, p. 55-80 , doi : 10.2307 / 1967475 , JSTOR : 1967475 (English).

literature

• Judy Green, Jeanne LaDuke: Pioneering women in American mathematics: the pre-1940 PhD's . American Mathematical Society , Providence, RI 2009, ISBN 978-0-8218-4376-5 (English).
  • Judy Green, Jeanne Laduke: SINCLAIR, Mary E. In: American Mathematical Society (Ed.): Supplementary Material For Pioneering Women In American Mathematics: ThePre-1940 PHD's . January 15, 2016, p. 559 (English, 674 pages, download [PDF; 2.9 MB ; accessed on August 15, 2020] Additional information (supplement) to the book).
• David E. Zitarelli: A history of mathematics in the United States and Canada . Volume 1. 1492-1930. tape 1 . MAA Press (Imprint of the American Mathematical Society), Providence, Rhode Island 2019, ISBN 978-1-4704-4829-5 (English).
• Laurel G. Sherman: Mary Emily Sinclair . In: Louise S. Grinstein, Paul J. Campbell (Eds.): Women of Mathematics: A Biobibliographic Sourcebook . Foreword by Alice Schafer. Greenwood Press, New York 1987, ISBN 0-313-24849-4 (English).
• Journal of the American Association of University Women. March 1956.
• Gabriele Kass-Simon, Patricia Farnes, Deborah Nash: Women of Science: Righting the Record . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1993, ISBN 978-0-253-20813-2 (English).

Web links

• Larry Riddle: Mary Emily Sinclair. In: Biographies of Women Mathematicians. Agnes Scott College, February 20, 2020 (English, biography). 
• Sinclair, Mary Emily. In: ZbMATH . (Publications). 
• Mary Emily Sinclair. In: Mathematics Genealogy Project . North Dakota State University - Department of Mathematics(English, dissertation). 
• Papers of Helen Brewster Owens, 1867-1968. In: HOLLIS for Archival Discovery. Harvard Library(English, content: Correspondence, scrapbooks, speeches, etc., of Helen Brewster Owens, mathematician and suffragist. In: Schlesinger Library , Radcliffe College ).