Evelyn Boyd Granville | |
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Born | Washington, D.C., U.S. | May 1, 1924
Died | June 27, 2023 Silver Spring, Maryland, U.S. | (aged 99)
Alma mater | Smith College, Yale University[1] |
Awards | honorary doctorate: Smith College honorary doctorate: Spelman College |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematics and Education |
Thesis | On Laguerre Series in the Complex Domain (1949) |
Doctoral advisor | Einar 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]
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.
Granville [contributed] her expertise in the field of computer science during its pioneer years.
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-).
[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.
[At] the Space Technology Laboratories in Los Angeles, [Granville] continued her pioneering work on orbit computations for manned space vehicles.
[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.
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.
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.
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.