10 Brilliant Black Mathematicians Who Never Received the Praise They Deserved

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Marjorie Lee Browne (Sept. 9, 1914 – Oct. 19, 1979)

Browne was a renowned mathematics educator and one of the first Black women to receive a doctorate in mathematics. Browne’s education included a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Howard University and a master’s and doctorate from the University of Michigan. She spent some of her career teaching modern math on the high school level. Then Browne joined the faculty at North Carolina Central University, where she taught mathematics and researched for 30 years.

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Evelyn Boyd Granville (born May 1, 1924)

In 1949, Granville received a doctorate in mathematics from Yale University, making her a pioneer. In 1950, she began her teaching career at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. She would go on to teach Vivienne Malone-Mayes and Etta Zuber Falconer who would also earn doctorates in mathematics. Her career in academia ended in 1952. She went on to work at Diamond Ordnance Fuze Laboratories, at IBM as a computer programmer, at U.S. Space Technology Laboratories and then in 1962 she worked at the North American Aviation Space and Information Systems Division. Granville was inducted into the Portrait Collection of African-Americans in Science in 1999. 

 

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