This is the best application ever sent out from this school. I predict that May Hickey will establish a record at Rice Institute.

Since Miss Hickey entered Rice in the fall of 1922 she has had a yearly average of 1, the highest grade obtainable. ... During her attendance at the institute, Miss Hickey has indulged little in student affairs, her work occupying the greater portion of her time. However, she was president of the Writing Club in 1926.

Introduction. The problem of solving the general fifth-degree equation may be investigated both algebraically and non-algebraically. In considering the resolution of the problem, we shall show that

1) The general fifth-degree equation cannot be solved by radicals;

2) With certain relations between the roots, it can be solved by radicals;

3) By means of elliptic functions, it can be solved completely in its most general form.

Introduction. Heisenberg stated the physical foundations of his theory of quantum mechanics in the will known article of the Zeitschrift für Physik, but the mathematical theory of it, resting on operations with infinite matrices, was developed later by Born and Jordan. Dirac's introduction of the Poisson bracket form avoids some of the difficulties of matrix differentiation encountered by Heisenberg, Born, and Jordan. A further use of the wave theory of Schrödinger, which employs differential equations, a subject more mathematically developed and usuable than the infinite matrices, reduces the calculation of Heisenberg's matrices to a process of quadratures.

The theory of Heisenberg rests on the principle that the true laws of nature are relations between magnitudes which must be fundamentally observable. Heisenberg requires that only indubitable, observable, atomic entities should be employed in a truly logical theory that is to account for radiation from atoms and molecules.

In the case of atomic theory the fundamental entities are of doubtful observability, as, for instance, the position, velocity, and period of the electron. We use these to calculate what we really want, the energy levels and the emitted light frequencies derivable from them, the experimentally observable quantities. No one has been able to give a method for the determination of the period of an electron in its orbit.

The author wishes to express her gratitude to Professor Ford for his helpful suggestions and criticisms in the foregoing work.

In his treatment of the theory of linear transformations Professor L R Ford has introduced the concept of the isometric circle. Used in the theory of discontinuous groups it leads easily to the construction of a fundamental region. The resulting simplification in the treatment of the linear transformation suggested the use of the same notion in connection with space transformations.

When approximately 200 degrees are conferred on Rice Institute graduates at commencement exercises Monday, Miss Deborah May Hickey, 511 Harvard, will receive the first Ph. D. ever conferred on a woman graduate of the Institute. ... She will leave in August for Munich, Germany, to do research work under the supervision of Prof C Carathéodory. After a year abroad she will return to the United States and enter the university teaching field, she said Saturday. The trip to Germany was made possible by the Alice Freeman Palmer fellowship that was awarded Miss Hickey last February from Wellesley. For the past three years she has held a fellowship in mathematics at Rice which required teaching. ... The attainment of the high scholastic standing that will be culminated with the conferring of a Ph.D. Monday, Miss Hickey pointed out, was made possible by "hard work" and "deep interest in the subject." She considers mathematics a profession, just as medicine or law, and planned early in life to follow it, she said.

Alfred Joseph Maria, an associate professor of mathematics at Brooklyn College, died Sunday at Gracie Square Hospital after a long illness. He was 67 years old.

Dr Maria was a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned his master's degree and doctorate at Rice Institute, where he later taught. He also taught at the University of Illinois and Duke University before joining the Brooklyn College faculty in 1939.

Early in his career, Dr Maria was a research fellow at Princeton University. Later, he spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N. J. He was a member of several scholarly societies and the author of many articles for academic journals.

He is survived by his widow, Mrs May Hickey Maria, who is also an associate professor of mathematics at Brooklyn College; two sisters, Emily and Christine, and a brother, Joseph.

After their marriage May Hickey and Alfred J. Maria spent some time in Houston and then in Norfolk, Virginia, with his parents. In the summer of 1939, May Maria taught at the State Teachers College in Radford, Virginia. In 1939 they moved to New York City where both eventually became affiliated with Brooklyn College. Albert J Maria first obtained a temporary appointment as tutor; he began in the day session in spring 1939 and had continuous employment at Brooklyn College after that. He was an instructor 1939-47, assistant professor from 1947 to about 1956, and then associate professor. Because of a brain tumour, he was on leave in the spring semester before his death in June 1964.

May Hickey Maria was an instructor in the evening session 1939-41 and in the summer session 1940-45 at Brooklyn College. She was a substitute in the day session 1941-42 when someone left for war-related work. She was an instructor at Queens College 1942-43. Her regular appointment at Brooklyn began after the war when she was an instructor 1946-55 and received tenure in 1948. She was an assistant professor 1955-62 and an associate professor 1962-75; she never applied for promotion to full professor. Both May Hickey and Albert J Maria taught in summer school in the earlier years. He also taught in the division of graduate studies his entire time at Brooklyn as did she from the mid-1950s. Her 1958 book on an axiomatic development of arithmetic and algebra was used in a course designed to satisfy the school's mathematics requirement. In summer 1959 she taught in an NSF institute for high school teachers at Arizona State University. While living in New York she was a regular attendee of regional meetings of the American Mathematical Society and the Metropolitan New York Section meetings of the Mathematical Association of America, the latter starting with its organisational meeting in 1941. When she was teaching at Delta State she had attended meetings of the Louisiana-Mississippi Section of the Mathematical Association of America and served as secretary 1932-33.

May H Maria died on 8 June 2001, after a brief illness. She was preceded in death by her parents, Charles and Edna Hickey, her six brothers and sisters, and her husband, Alfred J Maria.

Born 16 December 1904, in Mississippi, she and her family moved to East Texas, then settled in Houston where she graduated as valedictorian from her high school. In 1926 she earned a B.A. from Rice University, and received an M.A. with honours in 1927 in mathematics and physics. In 1929 she was awarded her doctorate in mathematics, becoming the first woman to earn a Ph.D. at Rice. After a year's fellowship study at the University of Munich, she taught at Delta State Teachers College in Mississippi. In 1938 she married Dr Alfred J Maria, and both accepted teaching positions at Brooklyn College.

While her husband focused his energies on mathematical research, she spent the duration of her career in the classroom. She developed a course for prospective mathematics teachers and authored a textbook, The Structure of Arithmetic and Algebra. She was also a devoted member of the Church of the Nativity in Brooklyn. After retiring in 1974, she remained in New York until 1993 when she returned to Texas, settling at Westminster Manor in Austin. Throughout her life, she inspired others by her unshakable integrity and optimism, her independent spirit, and her lifelong passion for learning.