... graduate training in the Department of Mathematics and Astronomy of the University of Chicago (chiefly under Professors E H Moore and L E Dickson, writing my theses under the latter) ...

The holder of the Alice Freeman Palmer Fellowship for the year 1915-16 was Miss Olive Clio Hazlett, B.A. Radcliffe College 1912, S.M. University of Chicago 1913, Ph.D. University of Chicago 1915. Miss Hazlett was unable to pursue research work in France and Germany, and spent the year in Cambridge, Massachusetts, attending certain Harvard University lectures, but chiefly in research work along the lines of her doctor's thesis, 'Classification and Invariantive Characterization of Nilpotent Algebras'. At the December meeting of the American Mathematical Society, Dr Hazlett presented a paper on this subject and a second one at the September Colloquium of the Society. The fellowship was awarded to Dr Hazlett for a second year, with the expectation that an important advance would be made in the subject where she had already obtained interesting and satisfactory results, but at the same time as the award of the fellowship, an appointment at Bryn Mawr College was offered to Miss Hazlett which she felt constrained to accept.

Hazlett's years at Mount Holyoke were some of her most productive research years and included the start of her long tenure as an associate editor of the 'Transactions' of the American Mathematical Society.

On first picking up Professor Dickson's book, the reader's attention is caught by the fact that the author assumes no knowledge beyond the most elementary parts of a first course in the theory of equations. As the reviewer turned from one page to another, there was a certain ease and simplicity in the style which called to mind some of those science primers of the days of our grandfathers. One felt once more the half-forgotten glamor of the rainy day long ago when one discovered several of these "primers", during one's secret investigation of a pompous old book-case on the landing of the stair.

... one of the two most noted women in America in the field of mathematics.

While at Illinois she served a three-year term on the council of the American Mathematical Society 1926-28, and in 1927 she became the second woman "starred" for mathematics in 'American Men of Science'; the first was Charlotte Scott.

... it was inevitable that I should continue research in algebra: linear algebras, nilpotent algebras, matrices, quaternions, division algebras; modular invariants and covariants in a Galois Field, $GF(p^{n})$, of order $p^{n}$ - both formal and otherwise; and ideals of a matrix algebra. The resulting papers were published in 'Bulletin' of the American Mathematical Society, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, Annals of Mathematics, Journal of Mathematics, and Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées as well as in Proceedings of the International Mathematical Congress (Toronto, 1924) and Atti del Congresso Internazionale dei Matematici (Bologna, 1928).

I did refereeing of research papers in above lines of algebra offered for publication to 'Transactions' of the American Mathematical Society, Annals of Mathematics, and (I think) Journal of Mathematics. For some years, I was an Associate Editor of the 'Transactions' of the American Mathematical Society, a research journal. Also, I wrote the article on 'Quaternions' for the Encyclopaedia Britannica (14th edition). - Around 1930, the International Association of University Women formed a committee to award fellowships and I was made the judge of any mathematical manuscript submitted to it.

Algebra was taught by Olive Hazlett who was, by our lights, a famous and important mathematician: she published papers and she taught advanced courses... Hazlett's course was based mainly on the first volume of van der Waerden, with, of course, some deletions and additions. She enjoyed telling us about one of her papers whose title she gave as "Embedding a ring in a field," and she enjoyed telling us how her colleague Shaw teased her about it - it evoked a picture of nefarious agricultural activities, he said.

Isolated and moderately successful but with aspirations of full equality, [she] denied the potential psychological dangers in [her] position.

... which Hazlett spent mainly in Colorado, first in Denver and then in Estes Park. Also in 1937 Hazlett described her interests as "rock climbing especially above the timberline and when the technique is pressure climbing; landscape photography, especially working across the light or into the light; Oriental rugs and other."

... tall, thin, her long grey hair done up in a bun, wisps of hair always hanging down in her face. She seemed so different that we in her class were rather frightened of her.

... in 1940 came the second World War and I found myself caught up in its tentacles. The American Mathematical Society appointed a Cryptanalysis Committee with (as I recall) five members of whom Professor A A Albert of the University of Chicago was chairman and Commander H T Engstrom the military (and hence the most important) member. Later, they apparently added some members and I was one of them. Accordingly, I had entrusted to me several classified military documents of the U.S. Signal Corps.

This meant that I had to exercise great caution as to [the documents] safety. Naturally, as a naive self-protection, I told the head of my department about the work and the documents, showing him the letter from Commander Engstrom. Otherwise, I did not mention documents or work to a soul except to an officer of the U.S.S.C. or to the F.B.I. when need arose. [In a subsequent letter Hazlett corrected this by giving the names of one or two others she had confided in, including E H Moore.] I never had them in my office at the University and I used them only in my apartment which I shared only with a loyal dog. If the door-bell rang when I was working with them, I quickly scuttled them out of sight and reach, replacing them with innocent stuff (research in progress) in algebra that was waiting. At my summer place, I had installed a Diebold Treasure Chest with triple-combination lock and then changed combinations single-handed.

It so happened that one of my ideas was, apparently, the bit that was featured by Commander Enstrom when he gave [the preliminary report of the Cryptanalysis Committee] to the American Mathematical Society at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago in the spring 1943 or 1944. - Later, they suggested that I go to D.C. to make certain contacts and I so did on my way back to my job in early fall of 1944. Of all my various reports, I kept a carbon copy, sent original "registered, return receipt requested" and then burned my copy in a galvanised iron pail, pouring ashes down toilet.

Olive Hazlett, a 1915 Dickson doctorate, followed her adviser's lead and studied nilpotent algebras, division algebras, and modular invariants before she apparently followed Dickson down the road to the arithmetic of algebras. At the 1924 International Congress of Mathematicians in Toronto, she extended his arithmetic of rational algebras to algebras over an arbitrary field. Hazlett could not claim the exclusive rights for these ideas, however, since Dickson presented the same generalisation at the same meeting. (This, perhaps, represented a bitter sweet moment for Dickson (and Hazlett, for that matter), bitter in that he was not the only one presenting a more general theory but sweet in that he had trained his student well.) Like Dickson, Hazlett certainly placed a high value on research mathematics. She wrote more papers than any other pre-1940 American woman mathematician and, reflective of her adviser's commitment to the broader mathematical community, she served as a cooperating editor of the 'Transactions' of the American Mathematical Society for 12 years, held a two-year term on the American Mathematical Society Council, and she, Charlotte Scott, and Anna Johnson Pell Wheeler composed the entire group of women mathematicians starred in 'American Men of Science' between 1903 and 1943. As for her relationship with Dickson, it can be characterised as one of mutual respect. In particular, although she continued to draw from his work, Hazlett apparently neither tended to consult Dickson directly about her employment dilemmas nor to keep him informed of her research. In short, for Hazlett, Dickson served as a role model rather than a mentor.

Interestingly, Hazlett consulted E H Moore and Herbert Slaught (and not Dickson) about professional decisions. In 1918, Hazlett wrote Moore concerning her dismissal from Bryn Mawr and Slaught regarding her subsequent job offer from Mount Holyoke. She wrote Moore again in 1925 as she considered a position at the University of Illinois (which she ultimately accepted). As an aside, Hazlett's 1925 letter to Moore candidly depicts the dilemmas faced by women attempting to do research mathematics at institutions without adequate libraries or sabbatical opportunities. See Olive Hazlett to E H Moore, January 29, 1918; Olive C Hazlett to Herbert S Slaught, February 25, 1918; and Olive Hazlett to E H Moore, March 11, 1925.