Book chapter
Toward a Documentary History of American Women Mathematics PhDs: The Doctoral Classes of 1940–1959
Women in Mathematics, pp.91-101
Association for Women in Mathematics Series, Springer International Publishing
12/03/2017
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-66694-5_5
Abstract
In 1993, I started to compile a database of biographical information on the roughly 200 women who earned PhDs in mathematics from US colleges and universities during the 1940s and 1950s. At the time, my primary motivation was to locate and interview as many of those still living as I reasonably could. My book, Women Becoming Mathematicians (MIT Press 2000)—while providing an overview of the entire group—was devoted in the main to what I had learned by conducting oral history interviews with 36 of the women. In recent years, I have returned to the task of completing the database and publishing it online. In this essay, I describe the personal motivations that led me to this project, surprises that emerged in the course of my research, and my ongoing efforts to complete and publish the database. In light of the trailblazing work of Green and LaDuke on the pre-1940 doctorates, and the project of Leggett and Case on PhDs of the 1960s and 1970s, I see this work as key to a larger program of compiling a documentary history of the first century of American women mathematics PhDs.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Toward a Documentary History of American Women Mathematics PhDs: The Doctoral Classes of 1940–1959
- Creators
- Margaret A. M Murray - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Women in Mathematics, pp.91-101
- Series
- Association for Women in Mathematics Series
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-3-319-66694-5_5
- eISSN
- 2364-5741
- ISSN
- 2364-5733
- Publisher
- Springer International Publishing; Cham
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 12/03/2017
- Academic Unit
- Mathematics; Rhetoric
- Record Identifier
- 9984240872902771
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