Evelyn Boyd Granville

Evelyn Boyd Granville
Born(1924-05-01)May 1, 1924
Washington, D.C., U.S.
DiedJune 27, 2023(2023-06-27) (aged 99)
Silver Spring, Maryland, U.S.
Alma materSmith College, Yale University[1]
Awardshonorary doctorate: Smith College

honorary doctorate: Spelman College

Sam A. Lindsey Chair of the University of Texas at Tyler
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics and Education
ThesisOn Laguerre Series in the Complex Domain (1949)
Doctoral advisorEinar Hille

Evelyn Boyd Granville (May 1, 1924 – June 27, 2023) was the second African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from an American university;[2] she earned it in 1949 from Yale University. She graduated from Smith College in 1945.[3][4][5] She performed pioneering work in the field of computing.[1][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]

  1. ^ a b Hicks, Mar (17 August 2023). "Obituary. 11 August 2023 Evelyn Boyd Granville, space-flight trailblazer (1924—2023) Mathematician and programmer who transcended barriers of race and gender / (Title in print issue:) Obituary. Evelyn Boyd Granville (1924–2023)". Nature. 620 (7974). Springer Nature: 487. doi:10.1038/d41586-023-02556-y. PMID 37567962. S2CID 260812574. Granville shared her expertise and her love of maths far and wide. She did so while being aware that many of her white, and male, contemporaries found it difficult to accept that a Black woman could be so successful and have such authority in the field. "I always smile when I hear that women cannot excel in mathematics," she once remarked.
  2. ^ "10 Famous Women in Tech History". Dice Insights. 2016-03-14. Retrieved 2017-02-01.
  3. ^ O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Evelyn Boyd Granville", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
  4. ^ Williams, Scott W. "Evelyn Boyd Granville". Black Women in Mathematics. Mathematics Department, State University of New York at Buffalo. Retrieved 2014-06-21..
  5. ^ Schlager, Neil; Lauer, Josh (2001). "Evelyn Boyd Granville". Science and Its Times: Understanding the Social Significance of Scientific Discovery. Gale Group. ISBN 9780787639334.
  6. ^ Nowlan, Robert A. (2017). Masters of Mathematics: The Problems They Solved, Why These Are Important, and What You Should Know about Them. Springer. p. 453. ISBN 9789463008938. Granville [contributed] her expertise in the field of computer science during its pioneer years.
  7. ^ Inventors and Inventions, Volume 2. Marshall Cavendish. 2008. p. 343. ISBN 9780761477648. During the 1960s, perhaps the greatest achievement in computing was guiding Apollo space rockets to the moon. Some of the important Apollo programs were written by Elizabeth Boyd Granville (1924-).
  8. ^ "Smith E-News 2006". Smith College. 2006. Retrieved 2017-10-29. [Granville has] long been a pioneer in applied mathematics and computer technology, having joined the staff of IBM in 1956 to work on projects for NASA.
  9. ^ Kessler, James H. (1996). Distinguished African American Scientists of the 20th Century. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 130. ISBN 9780897749558. [At] the Space Technology Laboratories in Los Angeles, [Granville] continued her pioneering work on orbit computations for manned space vehicles.
  10. ^ Beckenham, Annabel (January 2001). A Woman's Place in Cyberspace: critical analysis of discourse, purpose and practice with regard to women and new communication technologies (PDF) (MA). University of Canberra. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-11-07. Retrieved 2017-10-29. [The Ada Project,] originally developed at Yale University, is designed to serve as a clearing house for information and resources related to women and computing. Given its aim and its authority, it is telling that the site lists precisely twelve women as 'pioneering women of computing'. They are, in order of appearance; Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852), Edith Clarke (1883-1959), Rosa Peter (1905-1977), Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992), Alexandra Illmer Forsythe (1918-1980), Evelyn Boyd Granville, Margaret R. Fox, Erna Schneider Hoover, Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Alice Burks, Adele Goldstine, and Joan Margaret Winters.
  11. ^ "Newsletter of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Michigan Summer 2001" (PDF). University of Michigan. 2001. At IBM, Dr. Granville played an exciting and fundamental role in the dawn of the computer age, especially as it was being applied to celestial mechanics. For example, she was part of the team of scientists responsible for writing the computer programs that tracked the paths of vehicles in space on NASA's Project Vanguard and Project Mercury.
  12. ^ Collins, Sibrina (2016-06-13). "Unsung: Dr. Evelyn Boyd Granville". Undark.org. Another groundbreaker is Dr. Evelyn Boyd Granville, a mathematician who worked on orbit computations and computer procedures for three space-related projects — Project Vanguard (originally managed by the Naval Research Laboratory and later transferred to NASA); Project Mercury (the nation's first effort to put a man in space); and the program that eventually put a man on the moon, Project Apollo.
  13. ^ Mirjana, Ivanović; Zoran, Putnik; Anja, Šišarica; Zoran, Budimac (2010). "A Note on Performance and Satisfaction of Female Students Studying Computer Science". Innovation in Teaching and Learning in Information and Computer Sciences. 9 (1): 32–41. doi:10.11120/ital.2010.09010032. Another important figure of that time was Evelyn Granville, a pioneer in information technology who began her career in academia, went on to programming challenges at IBM and ultimately worked on the NASA space programme before returning to teach others.