Winifred Edgerton Merrill

Winifred Edgerton Merrill

Winifred Edgerton Merrill (born September 24, 1862 in Ripon , Wisconsin as Winifred Harington Edgerton , † September 6, 1951 in Fairfield , Connecticut ) was an American school principal and the first woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics in the USA .

Life

Merrill had been interested in astronomy since she was a teenager and graduated from Wellesley College with a bachelor's degree in 1883. She then taught as a teacher, but continued to study astronomy. After she succeeded in 1883 in predicting the orbit of the Pons Brooke Comet from data from the Harvard Observatory, her request to use the Columbia University Observatory was granted . There she studied mathematics and astronomy. After her first attempt at a degree was rejected, she followed President Frederick AP Barnard's advice to speak to each of the university's trustees individually, and on the second attempt, in 1886, was able to complete her Ph.D. (Title of the dissertation : Multiple Integrals and Their Geometrical Interpretation of Cartesian Geometry, in Trilinears and Triplanars, in Tangentials, in Quaternions, and in Modern Geometry; Their Analytical Interpretations in the Theory of Equations, Using Determinants, Invariants and Covariants as Instruments in the investigation ). The award was unanimous, and Merrill received top marks.

She then taught as a math teacher, and in 1887 she was offered the mathematics professorship at Wellesley College , which she turned down because she married the future state geologist of New York Frederick Merrill . She had four children with him.

In 1889 she was co-initiator of a petition to Columbia University to establish a college for women ( Barnard College ). In 1906 she founded the Oaksmere School for Girls in New Rochelle , New York and directed it until 1928 when the school closed for financial reasons and she moved to New York City . She was a trustee of Wellesley College and, most recently, from 1928 to 1948 the librarian at the Barbizon Hotel in New York City, which specialized in guest women who moved to New York to pursue their professional careers.

In 1933 she was honored in a grand ceremony at Columbia University and her portrait with the subtitle She opened the door ("She opened the door") hung at the university.

literature

• Susan Kelly, Sarah Rozner: Winifred Edgerton Merrill: she opened the door, Notices AMS, Volume 59, April 2012, p. 504, pdf

Web links

• Biography, Agnes Scott College
• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Winifred Edgerton Merrill. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .