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Maria Gaetana Agnesi
Agnesi was exposed to mathematics from a very early age. By the age of 20 she had started work on her most important contribution to mathematics, the book Analytical Institutions, which focused on differential and integral calculus. Originally intended as a textbook for her brothers, this work was eventually published in 1748 to wide acclaim, and was later translated into English. Early sections contained elementary problems on maxima, minima, tangents, and inflection points. Also described in t -
Sophie Germain
Germain taught herself mathematics by using books from her father's library. In the book Women in Mathematics, Lynn Osen says that Germain "spent the years of the Reign of Terror studying differential calculus" while confined to her home. During a lifetime of research in mathematics, she made important contributions to the areas of number theory and mathematical physics, including being one of the first mathematicians, male or female, to provide a partial solution to Fermat's Last Theorem for a -
Clara Latimer Bacon
Clara Latimer Bacon was born in Hillsgrove, McDonough County, Illinois of a pioneer New England family. She was graduated from Hedding College, Abingdon, Illinois in 1886. After a year of teaching she entered Wellesley College. In 1890 she received her B.A. degree from Wellesley College, then taught secondary school in Kentucky for one year and in Illinois for five years. In 1897, at the invitation of Dr. Goucher, she began teaching at the Women's College of Baltimore (now Goucher College) as a -
Clara Latimer Bacon
Clara Latimer Bacon was born in Hillsgrove, McDonough County, Illinois of a pioneer New England family. She was graduated from Hedding College, Abingdon, Illinois in 1886. After a year of teaching she entered Wellesley College. In 1890 she received her B.A. degree from Wellesley College, then taught secondary school in Kentucky for one year and in Illinois for five years. In 1897, at the invitation of Dr. Goucher, she began teaching at the Women's College of Baltimore (now Goucher College) as an -
Mabel Schmeiser Barnes
It was during her year at the Institute that Schmeiser met John Barnes, a Ph.D. graduate student in mathematics at Princeton. They were married a year later after Mabel spent time as a substitute math teacher in a New York City high school. Mabel moved to Massachusetts where her husband was an assistant professor at Tufts College. There she was able to attend the mathematics colloquia at Harvard University. Their son was born in 1936 and a daughter a few years later. Though she had no official -
Sheila Scott Macintyre
Sheila Scott was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she attended the Edinburgh Ladies' College from 1926-1928. She received her M.A. degree with first class honors in mathematics and natural philosophy in 1932 from the University of Edinburgh. She then continued her studies at Girton College at Cambridge University where she earned First Class Honors in the Mathematical Tripos and a B.A. degree. During her final year at Cambridge she did research with Mary Cartwright leading to a publication "O -
Grace Marie Bareis
In December, 1915, Bareis attended the organizational meeting for the purpose of establishing the Mathematical Association of America. It was at this meeting that the association's constitution and by-laws were approved. Bareis was a charter member of the Mathematical Association of America, as well as a member of the American Mathematical Society. In addition, she was also a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. In 1935 Bareis was appointed to the Board of Trustees of Heidelberg C -
Ruth Aaronson Bari
Ruth Bari earned a Master's degree at John Hopkins in 1943 but because of work and family responsibilities, did not complete her Ph.D. until 1966. Her dissertation was on "Absolute reducibility of maps of at most 19 regions" [Abstract]. She taught at George Washington University until her retirement in 1988. Her work in graph theory has been recognized as influential, especially in the area of chromatic polynomials. One of her three daughters is Gina Kolata, one of the nation's best known scienc -
Nina Karlovna BariBari
In 1952, Bari published a remarkable article on primitive functions and trigonometric series converging almost everywhere. "A primitive of a function f(x), defined on an interval [a,b], is any continuous function F(x) for which F(x)=f(x) almost everywhere on [a,b]." (Women of Mathematics, A Bibliographic Sourcebook, p.10) In that article Bari tried to prove that "every function that is finite and measurable almost everywhere has a primitive whose Fourier series, differentiated term by term, conv -
Gloria Hewitt
In 1962, Gloria Hewitt became only the third African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics. In a 1995 interview with Shannon Hensley, a student at Agnes Scott College, Hewitt referred to her college years at Fisk University when asked at what point she realized her interest in pursuing a career in mathematics: "I remember when I took calculus in college the only book I took home over the Christmas holidays was my calculus book. I wanted to do those word problems. I worked on one probl
