# African American mathematicians

In her 1987 paper Black Men and Women in Mathematical Research, Patricia Clark Kenschaft writes:
The widespread American belief that blacks and females cannot learn mathematics as easily as white males is a self-perpetuating myth. It causes black children to be exposed to less rigorous mathematics training in our still segregated schools and their teachers' expectations to be lower in most schools. Because statistically their parents have received an inferior mathematical education, their homes are not as brimming with mathematical enticements as those of whites. Furthermore, they are not even told about the existence of the convincing role models that do exist. Thus it is especially important to recognise that many blacks have overcome these obstacles and become leaders in the mathematical world.
We list below data on the African Americans to be awarded a doctorate in mathematics up to and including 1960. There is some ambiguity in what constitutes a mathematics doctorate and we have omitted those with a thesis which we consider to be on mathematical education. The term African American is not well defined - is someone of African descent who was born in Cuba, say, but was brought up in the United States an African American? There is also some confusion about the year a Ph.D. was awarded - was it when the university approved the degree or when the candidate graduated? We have not made a serious attempt to order correctly those whose degrees were awarded in the same year. For each African American we give some biographical data or a link to our MacTutor biography where available.

A full list of African American mathematicians in our archive is at THIS LINK.

1. Name: Elbert Frank Cox.
Place of Birth: Evansville, Indiana, USA.
Date of Birth: 5 December 1895.
Year of Degree: 1925.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Polynomial solutions of difference equations.
University: Cornell University.
Thesis advisor: William Lloyd Garrison Williams.
Biographical Data:
Access his biography at THIS LINK.

2. Name: Dudley Weldon Woodard.
Place of Birth: Galveston, Texas, USA.
Date of Birth: 3 October 1881.
Year of Degree: 1928.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: On Two-Dimensional Analysis Situs with Special Reference to the Jordan Curve Theorem.
University: University of Pennsylvania.
Biographical Data:
Access his biography at THIS LINK.

3. Name: William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor.
Place of Birth: Norfolk, Virginia, USA.
Date of Birth: 4 January 1908.
Year of Degree: 1933.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Topological Immersion of Peanian Continua in a Spherical Surface.
University: University of Pennsylvania.
Biographical Data:
Access his biography at THIS LINK.

4. Name: Walter Richard Talbot.
Place of Birth: Pittsburgh, USA.
Date of Birth: 13 December 1909.
Year of Degree: 1934.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Fundamental regions in $S_{6}$ for the simple quaternary $G_{60}$, Type I.
University: University of Pittsburgh.
Biographical Data:
Access his biography at THIS LINK.

5. Name: Reuben Roosevelt McDaniel.
Place of Birth: Fairfax, Virginia, USA.
Date of Birth: 27 July 1902.
Year of Degree: 1938.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Representation by Positive Ternary Quadratic Forms.
University: Cornell University.
Biographical Data:
Access his biography at THIS LINK.

6. Name: Joseph Alphonso Pierce.
Place of Birth: Waycross, Ware County, Georgia, USA.
Date of Birth: 10 August 1902.
Year of Degree: 1938.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: A Study of a Universe of n Finite Populations with Application to Moment-Function Adjustments for Grouped Data.
University: University of Michigan.
Biographical Data:
Access his biography at THIS LINK.

7. Name: David Harold Blackwell.
Place of Birth: Centralia, Illinois, USA.
Date of Birth: 24 April 1919.
Year of Degree: 1941.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Some Properties of Markov's Chains.
University: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Biographical Data:
Access his biography at THIS LINK.

8. Name: Jesse Ernest Wilkins Jr.
Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Date of Birth: 27 November 1923.
Year of Degree: 1942.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Multiple Integral Problems in Parametric Form in the Calculus of Variations.
University: University of Chicago.
Biographical Data:
Access his biography at THIS LINK.

9. Name: Martha Euphemia Lofton Haynes.
Place of Birth: Washington D.C., USA.
Date of Birth: 11 September 1890.
Year of Degree: 1943.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: The Determination of Sets of Independent Conditions Characterizing Certain Special Cases of Symmetric Correspondences.
University: Catholic University of America.
Biographical Data:
Access her biography at THIS LINK.

10. Name: Clarence Francis Stephens.
Place of Birth: Gaffney, South Carolina, USA.
Date of Birth: 24 July 1917.
Year of Degree: 1943.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Non-Linear Difference Equations Analytic in a Parameter.
University: University of Michigan.
Biographical Data:
Access his biography at THIS LINK.

11. Name: Joseph James Dennis.
Place of Birth: Gainsville, Florida, USA.
Date of Birth: 11 April 1905.
Year of Degree: 1944.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Some Points in the Theory of Positive Definite J-Fractions.
University: Northwestern University.
Biographical Data:
Dennis was the son of James Dennis, a farmer, and his wife Mary Fisher. He attended Liberty Hill Methodist Church School in Rutledge, Florida, and after completing 7th grade had to leave to work on the family farm. A former teacher from Liberty Hill Methodist Church School spoke to his father and persuaded him to allow his son to attend Lincoln High School. Dennis moved to stay with the teacher while at Lincoln High School; he graduated in 1925. Freedman's Aid Society provided him with funds to attend Clark College, Atlanta. Asked to teach high school mathematics at the College, he soon showed himself a highly competent teacher. While at the College, he lost both of his older brothers who died of malaria. He was awarded a B.A. from Clark College in 1929, and returned Lincoln High School as a teacher. After a year, he was appointed to teach at Clark College. He continued his education being awarded an M.A. from Northwestern University in 1935. He served as the chair of the department of mathematics at Clark College from 1930 to 1974. In addition, he taught summer courses at Atlanta University during 1940-46. From 1971 to 1977 he was Fuller E Calloway Chair of Mathematics at Albany State College. Sherese L Williams writes:
He embodied ... excellence, achievement, devotion, good sportsmanship, invincibility, loyalty, idealism, compassion, and truth. ... Dr Dennis demanded excellence first from himself. How could he require the best from his students, peers, colleagues, and family if he first did not require this from himself? He was a man of his word and lived by it. He demanded excellence in and out of the classroom, from his students and Clark College alumni, and especially from his family. ... It is undisputed that Dr Dennis was a high achiever as a student and as an alumnus ... However, it would be fair to assume that he would cite his greatest achievement as seeing his students succeed. ... [He was devoted] to work, to duty, to the College, and to worthy causes. ... [He had] the will to never falter, never to give up, never to fail; the will to endure to the end; the will to be victorious, playing the game courageously from the beginning to the end in athletic games and in the game of life. Without his desire to see things through and to help others achieve at his level or higher, it would have been easy for this young man from Florida to become content with just a bachelor of arts degree.
He died on 12 May 1977 while on holiday in Switzerland.

Place of Birth: Chandler, Oklahoma, USA.
Date of Birth: 9 June 1909.
Year of Degree: 1944.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: On Relations Satisfied by Linear Operators on a Three Dimensional Linear Vector Space.
University: University of Michigan.
Biographical Data:
Ellis was one of ten children of restaurant owner Whit Ellis and his wife Margaret Riley. He graduated from Douglass School, Oklahoma at age 14, was awarded a Bachelor's Degree from Wilberforce University, Ohio in 1929 and a Master's Degree from the University of New Mexico in 1938. He then began teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in Oklahoma, next at the Boys Industrial School in Boley, Oklahoma, before being appointed to Fort Valley State College in Georgia, and then at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. After the award of his doctorate, from 1944 to 1948 he worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory on radar. He taught at Boston University before being appointed as a professor at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, where he served for 19 years, then in 1967 he was appointed as professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan and Associate Dean of the Horace H Rackham School of Graduate Studies. He died on 20 November 1989 in San Jose, California. A tribute by the University of Michigan states:
Ellis was a highly respected member of national and international mathematics education groups. At Michigan he made notable contributions to the Michigan Scholars Program working to establish and maintain close ties between Michigan's undergraduate colleges and the University. He acted as consultant to several international groups studying the problems of mathematical education in the developing countries of Africa, South America and Asia. In 1966 he was made a Comendador en la Orden de las Palmas Magisteriales del Peru for his contributions to their higher education program. Throughout his career up to the day of his death he remained active in the field of Mathematics. Ellis was a very outgoing man who made friends easily and, once made, retained these friendships. Throughout his life he nurtured and challenged students of all races, and took special joy in working with Black students.

13. Name: Warren Hill Brothers Jr.
Place of Birth: Talladega, Alabama, USA.
Date of Birth: 15 January 1915.
Year of Degree: 1944.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: On the Solution of Boundary Value Problems in Hyperbolic Differential Equations.
University: University of Michigan.
Biographical Data:
Warren Hill Brothers was the son of the painter Warren Hill Brothers Sr. and his wife Georgia B Barclay. He was awarded a Bachelor's Degree and a Master's Degree from Talladega College before being appointed as an instructor in mathematics at the College, a college for African Americans in Talladega, Alabama, founded in 1867. He had been awarded the B.A. in 1936 "summa cum laude." He was also awarded an MBA (Master of Business Administration) by the University of Michigan in 1944. After the award of his Ph.D., also in 1944, he continued to teach at Talladega College, being Professor of Mathematics and Physics in 1950. The mathematics courses at the College in 1950 were: First Year General Course; The Concepts of Physical Sciences; College Algebra, Trigonometry, and Elementary Statistics; and College Algebra, Trigonometry and Analysis which had the syllabus:
A study of quadratics, graphs, progressions, logarithms, with an introduction to complex numbers, theory of equations, and determinants; the trigonometric functions and their application to the solution of triangles, coordinate systems, the straight line, and an intensive study of conic sections.
We give the following quote from a student who attended Talladega College:
At Talladega College I was taught by the white professor of sociology Donald Rasmussen, and the Negro professor of mathematics Dr Warren Hill Brothers, Jr. Both were young men, and men of vision, with contacts outside of the South. Talladega students benefited immeasurably from the teaching and bearing of these two men. Rasmussen took a bus-load of students to a national student conference that met in Columbia, South Carolina, while I was there. Brothers supported such activities and maintained high principles both within and without his professional field.
Brothers attended the International Congress of Mathematicians held in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 30 August to 6 September 1950. He died on 12 January 1984.

14. Name: Jeremiah Certaine.
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Date of Birth: 6 June 1920.
Year of Degree: 1945.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Lattice-Ordered Groupoids and Some Related Problems.
University: Harvard University.
Biographical Data:
Access his biography at THIS LINK.

15. Name: Evelyn Boyd Granville.
Place of Birth: Washington, D.C., USA.
Date of Birth: 1 May 1924.
Year of Degree: 1949.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: On Laguerre Series in the Complex Domain.
University: Yale University.
Biographical Data:
Access her biography at THIS LINK.

16. Name: Marjorie Lee Browne.
Place of Birth: Memphis, Tennessee, USA.
Date of Birth: 9 September 1914.
Year of Degree: 1949.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: On the One Parameter Subgroups in Certain Topological and Matrix Groups.
University: University of Michigan.
Biographical Data:
Access her biography at THIS LINK.

17. Name: George Hench Butcher Jr.
Place of Birth: Washington D.C., USA.
Date of Birth: 28 May 1920.
Year of Degree: 1951.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: An Extension of the Sum Theorem of Dimension Theory.
University: University of Pennsylvania.
Biographical Data:
Butcher was the son of George Hench Butcher Sr, who worked in a drug store, and his wife Josephine Washington. He was a graduate of Dunbar High School (graduating in 1937), awarded a B.S. from Howard University in 1941 and an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1943. The results from his 1951 Ph.D. thesis were published in the paper An Extension of the Sum Theorem of Dimension Theory which begins:-
The purpose of this paper is to prove for a class of spaces more general than separable metric the sum theorem of dimension theory, using the Urysohn-Menger dimension function. This class of "K-separable" spaces is defined and some of its properties are developed. It is proved that the property of being K-separable and metric is hereditary, additive, and topological. An example of a nowhere separable metric space by Urysohn is shown to be K-separable and examples of non-K-separable spaces are given.
Butcher taught at Howard University for 39 years. He married Goler F Teal in 1946. George and Goler Butcher had four children, Lily, Georgette, George III and Carl. Goler told her husband she would like to attend law school when the children were older. George Butcher, however, encouraged his wife to start training right away so she attended Howard University Law School, graduating in 1957 and became a lawyer and professor of international law. She said: "My husband helped me." George Butcher published (with James Ashley Donaldson) Regular and singular perturbation problems for a singular abstract Cauchy problem (1975) and (with James E Joseph) Characterizations of a generalized notion of compactness (1976).

He died on 18 June 2016 in Washington D.C.

18. Name: Luna Isaac Mishoe.
Place of Birth: Bucksport, South Carolina, USA.
Date of Birth: 5 January 1917.
Year of Degree: 1953.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: On the Expansion of an Arbitrary Function in Terms of Eigen-Functions of a Non-Selfadjoint Differential System.
University: New York University.
Biographical Data:
Mishoe was the son of Henry Mishoe, a labourer at a saw mill, and Martha Ellen Oliver. He attended Marion County Training School where he loved mathematics and was the best in his class. He studied for a B.S. in mathematics and chemistry at Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina, being awarded the degree in 1936. He was appointed as professor of mathematics and physics at Kittrell College in North Carolina. During this time he studied for a Master's Degree in Mathematics and Physics at the University of Michigan, and was awarded his M.S. in 1942. During World War II, he was a Tuskegee Airman from 1942-1945 serving as a photographic intelligence and communications officer for the Army Air Force 99th Squadron. This was an African American Squadron. He taught mathematics and physics at Delaware State College (1946-48), then at Morgan State College in Baltimore (1948-60). He did postdoctoral research at Oxford University in England during the academic year 1955-1956. During the summers from 1952 to 1957 he worked at the Aberdeen Proving Ground's Ballistic Research Laboratory, becoming a consultant there from 1957. In 1960 he was appointed president of Delaware State College where he served for the rest of his career:
During his long Delaware State University tenure, the institution would experience the greatest growth ever achieved under any presidential tenure in its history. Dr Mishoe led a transformation that included greatly improving the relationship between Delaware State University and state government; the construction 10 new buildings on campus and the upgrading of existing ones; and the significant expansion of the academic offerings including an increase in undergraduate degree programs from 18 to 70, as well as the  establishment of the first three master degree programs. All of those developments contributed to and supported the prolific expansion of the enrolment from 368 to 2,327 students prior to his retirement.
He died on 16 January 1989 in Dover, Delaware, USA.

19. Name: Fred Boyer Wright.
Place of Birth: Big Lick, Roanoke City, Virginia, USA.
Date of Birth: 14 December 1925.
Year of Degree: 1953.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Ideals in Operator Algebras.
University: University of Chicago.
Biographical Data:
Wright was the son of Frederick Boyer Wright Jr, a clerk for the Norfolk and Western Railway, and his wife Irene Boyd Straley. He studied at Jefferson High School, then spent one year at Virginia Military Institute before being inducted into the Navy V-12 program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He graduated from Midshipman's school at Fort Schuyler, New York on 5 July 1945 and served on Wallis Island in the South Pacific. After completing active service, he returned to Chapel Hill completing his undergraduate studies in mathematics and continuing to the award of a Master's Degree. He was appointed as an Instructor in Mathematics at Chapel Hill then, after a year, went to the University of Chicago for his doctorate. The Introduction to his thesis begins:
The algebraic properties of algebras of bounded operators on Hilbert space have been the subject of widespread interest and intensive investigation for more than twenty-five years. In earlier research, it was customary to consider only those algebras which are closed in the weak operator topology. In recent years, progress has been made in the study of algebras in which the less restrictive assumption of closure in the uniform topology is made. The present work is concerned with a class of algebras which is more general than the class of weakly closed algebras, yet which has a very close connection with these algebras. These are the so-called AW*-algebras of Kaplansky.
After working at the Institute for Air Weapons Research for the Navy he was appointed as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Tulane University. He published around 30 research papers, mostly on algebra, and wrote a History of Mathematics book for a course he delivered. He died at Chapel Hill on 28 April 2006.

20. Name: Charles Bernard Bell Jr.
Place of Birth: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
Date of Birth: 20 August 1928.
Year of Degree: 1953.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Structures of measure spaces.
University: University of Notre Dame.
Biographical Data:
Bell was the son of Charles Bernard Bell, Sr. and Estell Thomas Bell. He was awarded a B.S. in mathematics and statistics from Xavier University in New Orleans in 1947 and, the following year, he graduated with an M.S. degree from the University of Notre Dame with the dissertation Symmetric Groups in Three Space. He held positions as a graduate Teaching Assistant at Notre Dame (1949-51), a Research Engineer with the Douglas Aircraft Company (1951-55), an assistant professor of mathematics and physics at Xavier University (1955-57), a research associate at Stanford University (1957-58), and San Diego State University (1958-66). He was a Fulbright Scholar, taught at the University of Madrid (1964-65) and spent time at various institutions such as the University of Amsterdam and the University of Erlangen. He worked as Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Case Western Reserve University (1966-68), then at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (1968-71). His specialties were nonparametric statistics, stochastic processes, and related areas. He spent time during the summers at Marsabit in Kenya, at Calcutta in India, and in Nigeria helping local mathematicians. He was professor of mathematics at Tulane University (1971-1977) and professor of Biostatistics at the University of Washington in Seattle (1977-81). He was fluent in many languages. Ingram Olkin wrote:
Chuck loved languages, and conquered many. He could speak, read, and write in Spanish, German, Russian, Dutch, French, Italian, and Swahili. I remember on one of his visits to Stanford that he would talk to someone in one language, and turn around to someone else and speak in another language. In fact, he sought out international visitors in order to practice his multi-lingual conversational skills. As an example of this linguistic prowess, he co-authored four papers in Spanish, one in German, a monograph in French and one in Dutch.
He returned to San Diego State University as a professor of Mathematical Sciences in 1981 remaining there until he retired in 1992. MathSciNet lists 40 papers by Bell between 1954 and 1992, mostly written in English but a few in Spanish and one in German. He said:
I enjoy family, I enjoy eating gumbo, and for more than four decades I enjoyed teaching mathematics and statistics and doing research in nonparametric statistics, stochastic processes and related problems and applications.
In 1996 he said:
For many years in Louisiana on each Sunday, 19 cousins and I would get together to share, relate to family and learn more about our family. Even today I am fascinated with the genealogy of my extended family. Though our family is but a ripple in the sea of humanity, the more I learn the more intrigued I am with mankind.
He died on 26 October 2010 in Los Angeles.

21. Name: Vincent Vernon McRae.
Place of Birth: Columbia, Richland, South Carolina, USA.
Date of Birth: 2 September 1918.
Year of Degree: 1955.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: On the unitary similarity of matrices.
University: Catholic University of America.
Biographical Data:
McRae was the son of Thomas Tyson McRae, who was a barber, and his wife Claretta Nora Avery. He was awarded a B.S. by Miner Teachers College in 1940. He married Mae Agnes Smith on 27 June 1941. He was a teacher in District of Columbia public schools (1940-42) He was awarded an M.S. by the Catholic University of America in 1944, the spent the academic year 1944-45 as a postgraduate student at the University of Chicago. He worked as an operations analyst in the Operations Research Office of Johns Hopkins (1952-61). His doctoral dissertation was approved by Norman Arthur Wiegmann, Professor of Mathematics, as director and by Dr E J Finan and Dr R W Moller as readers. He worked as the Operations Research Office in McLean, Virginia (1962-64). He became Technical Assistant to the President of the United States' Advisor on Science and Technology. In that role he attended many conferences from 1966 onwards on night vision which was seen as important to the military at this time. On 13 December 1967 he wrote the memo Case Study for the Vietnam Development Group: Night Vision for Aircraft Systems. He died on 20 November 1998 in Silver Spring, Montgomery, Maryland, USA.

22. Name: Lonnie Grafton Cross (Abdulalim Abdullah Shabazz).
Place of Birth: Bessemer, Alabama, USA.
Date of Birth: 22 May 1927.
Year of Degree: 1955.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: On the distribution of eigenvalues.
University: Cornell University.
Biographical Data:
Cross was the son of Lonnie Cross, who was a carpenter, and his wife Naomi Gatting. He later announced becoming a member of the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Abdulalim Abdullah Shabazz. He was awarded a B.A. in Mathematics and Chemistry from Lincoln University in 1949 and a Master of Science in 1951 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He worked for the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo, New York, and was a Research Mathematician with the Metals Research Laboratory of the Electro Metallurgical Company at Niagara Falls in 1955. He was appointed Director of Education for the University of Islam No. 4 in Washington, D.C. in 1963 and remained there until 1975. From 1975 until 1986, he taught in Chicago, Detroit, and in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. He returned to Clark Atlanta in 1986 where he was chair from 1990 until 1995:
The relocation to Atlanta coincided with the Sputnik era when the National Science Foundation, among other agencies, determined to fund science and mathematics Education both for students and to bring teachers up to date. When he went to Atlanta University, the school had only two graduate students in mathematics. By the end of the year there were eight. When he left in 1963, Atlanta University had graduated 109 students with master's degrees in mathematics. Shabazz supervised 78 completed master's theses during this period. More than 30 percent of those students went on to receive doctoral degrees in mathematics or mathematics Education. Between 1976 and 1982, Shabazz was also an adjunct professor on the faculty of the Union Graduate School where he supervised four successful Ph.D. candidates. In 1992, one hundred of the African American holders of doctoral degrees could trace their academic lineage back to Shabazz or to his students.
From 1998 until 2000, he was Chair of the Mathematics and Computer Science Department at Lincoln University. With an outstanding record working to increase the participation of women, minorities, and individuals with physical disabilities into science and engineering, he was awarded the Mentor Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1992. He received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring award from President Clinton in September 2000. His final position was as professor of mathematics at Grambling State University.

He died on 25 June 2014 in Grambling, Louisiana, USA.

23. Name: Lloyd Kenneth Williams.
Place of Birth: Bennington, Oklahoma, USA.
Date of Birth: 6 October 1925.
Year of Degree: 1956.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: On Separating Transcendency Bases.
University: University of California at Berkeley.
Biographical Data:
Williams was the son of migrant workers Coy Williams and Corinne Watson. Coy Williams had various jobs such as hotel porter. Lloyd Kenneth Williams. was brought up by his mother and step father L D James. He attended Turner Industrial School, Grandfield, Oklahoma, before continuing his secondary education at Boyd High School, graduating in 1942. He then attended Langston University, Langston, Oklahoma, 1942-1944. With America involved in World War II, he took a break in his education to join the Navy, serving from 1944 to 1946 in the Pacific. Completing his service, he studied mathematics at University of California at Berkeley being awarded a B.A. in 1948 and a Master's Degree in the following year. He was appointed to teach mathematics at Prairie View College, Texas but returned to Berkeley in 1953 to teach at the University of San Francisco while studying for his doctorate at University of California at Berkeley. After being awarded a Ph.D. he taught as an instructor at Grambling College in Louisiana (1956-57), then the Southern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana where he was Chair of Mathematics (1957-61), next at the Southern Illinois University in St Louis (1961-64), next at Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta (1964-75) where he was first professor, then chair of mathematics, before going to the Texas Southern University in Houston in 1975 where he remained until he retired in 1999:
He loved Shakespeare, especially Othello, and could often be found silently mouthing the text at Miller Theater productions. He loved gospel music, Louis Armstrong, Nat "King" Cole, and Duke Ellington. He idolised Paul Robeson. He was quiet and a little shy, always a gentleman, with an irresistible, beaming smile, a wry sense of humour and a great laugh. He endured poverty, deprivation, discrimination, and personal tragedy without ever doubting God's goodness or His fairness. His life was characterised by faith, generosity, and charity towards those less fortunate.
He died on 18 November 2001 in Houston, Harris, Texas, USA.

24. Name: Elgy Sibley Johnson.
Place of Birth: Jacksonville, Florida, USA.
Date of Birth: 8 November 1912.
Year of Degree: 1957.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Properties of solutions of nonlinear differential equations.
University: Catholic University of America.
Biographical Data:
Johnson was the son of William Johnson and his wife Rosa Lee Sibley. He graduated from Johnson C Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina and was awarded a Master's Degree in mathematical statistics by the University of Michigan. He began a career as a school teacher in 1941, teaching at District of Columbia public schools, Brown Junior High School, Dunbar High School and Spingarn High School. He did military service during World War II (December 1942-May 1946), and was sent to Europe. In addition to his Ph.D. from the Catholic University in Washington D.C. in 1957, he was awarded a law degree from that university. In 1957 he was appointed to the American University in Washington D.C., then in 1960 he joined the District of Columbia Teachers College, becoming chair of mathematics. He served as president of the Federal City College (1972-74), appointed to rescue the College which was failing. In 1973 he appeared before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Ninety-Third Congress. Johnson's biographical details were read out. They begin:
Dr Elgy S Johnson assumed the duties of the Office of the President, Federal City Colleges, on August 1, 1972; assigned by the Board of Higher Education of the District of Columbia to act in the Board's behalf in administrative matters. Prior to assuming these responsibilities, Dr Johnson was the District of Columbia Teachers College faculty representative to the Board of Higher Education, professor and chairman of the division of mathematics, and chairman of the faculty senate of D.C. Teachers College. Dr Johnson has been involved in the educational life of the District of Columbia throughout his career, serving first in the public school system of the District before joining the District of Columbia Teachers College faculty.
He was asked if the Federal City College could be saved. He replied:
Very definitely, Mr Chairman. I believe during the past year, with my fellow staff members who are here with me, we have reorganised Federal City College; we have restructured it. We have divided the academic community into appropriate schools; we have appointed acting chairmen, acting directors, and acting deans. We have outlined procedures and what is much more important, we have invited the auditing department of the District of Columbia, after requesting the Mayor to allow us to do so; we have asked every department to be audited. We have contacted the investigative authorities throughout the District and Federal Government. We have investigated trouble where we believed it could possibly arise. We have investigated all sources of turbulence and disturbance. There are other investigative efforts going on. We believe at the culmination of these efforts. Federal City will then be on a straight track and will satisfy all aspirations of the people of this area and the members of this committee.
In 1974 he returned to the District of Columbia Teachers College. He joined the University of the District of Columbia when it was founded in 1976 and continued to serve there until he retired in 1983. He died of pneumonia on 12 March 1987 at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington D.C. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

25. Name: Eugene Alexander Graham, Jr.
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Date of Birth: 25 March 1925.
Year of Degree: 1957.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Information Theory.
University: University of Turin, Italy.
Biographical Data:
Graham was the son of Eugene A Graham Sr and his wife Irma Julia Meyer, who were married in Philadelphia in 1920. The 1930 US Census records Eugene Graham living with his mother and sister Percilla at the home of his maternal grandparents Percy and Julia Meyer. Graham studied at the Central High School in Philadelphia, graduating in 1943. He enlisted in the army on 23 August 1943 and was sent to Italy in June 1944, remaining there until December 1945. He was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry. The citation reads:
Eugene A Graham, Sergeant, 370th Infantry. On 22 November 1944 Sergeant Graham was operating as a radio operator with an attacking platoon which had almost gained a mountain-crest objective when it was met by intense enemy machine-gun fire at point-blank range. This, together with heavy mortar and grenade fire at close range, forced the platoon to withdraw. With intense mortar fire bursting about him, Sergeant Graham calmly radioed for artillery fire upon the enemy and moved up the hill alone. Despite heavy machine-gun fire directed at him and with the pack radio strapped to his back, he moved to a position from which he could observe and direct friendly artillery fire. Alone, he continued crawling under fire well forward of the infantry and successfully directed artillery by radio, silencing an enemy machine gun and several mortars.
Returning to the USA at the end of the war, he studied at Pennsylvania University and was awarded a B.A. in 1948. He then studied electrical engineering at MIT, graduating in January 1954. He went to Italy and studied for the doctorate in mathematics at the Università degli Studi di Torino. He was the first African American to be awarded a mathematics Ph.D. from a university outside the United States. The following report appears in May 1958 showing the problems he faced when he returned to the United States:
Scientist charges Housing Bias in Massachusetts town. A Negro scientist, who made an advance $115 deposit on an apartment in Malden, Massachusetts. but was rejected when he appeared to pick up his keys, filed a discrimination complaint with the State Commission Against Discrimination. Dr Eugene A Graham Jr., an electronics graduate from MIT, received a rebate from the unidentified white owner and$250 to cover damages.
After this he went to France where he lived for the rest of his life. In 1966 he became a member of SIAM, giving his address as Université de Paris. As an example of his work let us note that he presented the paper On the potential of microwave to millimetre wave semiconductor phase-shifting for inertialess antenna scanning of mounted antennas to the IEE and IEEE European Conference on Microwaves held in September 1969 in London, England. He wrote a book, Buffalo, about his experiences in a segregated and under-staffed battalion in World War II. He could not get it published in the USA, so it was published in France in 1969. His son Carl Graham was brought up in France, obtaining a mathematics doctorate in 1985 from Paris VI for his thesis Systèmes de particules en interaction dans un domaine à paroi collante et problèmes de martingales avec réflexion . Eugene Graham died on 15 April 1997 at Orly, Val-De-Marne, France.

26. Name: John Quill Taylor King.
Place of Birth: Memphis, Tennessee, USA.
Date of Birth: 25 September 1921.
Year of Degree: 1957.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: A statistical analysis of the economic aspects of nineteen Protestant church-related colleges in Texas.
University: University of Texas.
Biographical Data:
King was the son of the ear, nose, and throat specialist Dr John Quill Taylor and his wife Alice Clinton Woodson. He had an older sister Edwina born in 1920. John King's father died in 1921 as a result of World War I injuries and his mother married the insurance executive Charles Blevins King on 25 August 1932. At this point he took the name "King". He attended Gregory Town School for African Americans in Austin, Texas (now Blackshear Elementary School) and then L C Anderson High School, the only school high school for African Americans in Austin at this time. He graduated in 1936, then majored in mathematics at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He graduated with a B.A. in 1941, then married Marcet Alice Hines (1922-1995) on 28 June 1942. He served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1946, first in the Pacific and then in the Philippines. After the war, he studied at Samuel Huston College in Austin and, after the award of the B.S. in 1947 he was appointed to teach at Samuel Huston College in Austin. He was awarded an M.S. from DePaul University in Chicago in 1950 and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas in 1957. The Abstract of his thesis begins:
Findings - The loss of earning power and wealth from disability exceeds $20 billion annually in the United States. This represents perhaps the most fertile field for the development of private insurance. The financial impact of long term disability is rarely met by insurance, since most available coverages are limited in availability, short in duration, or low in amount of benefit. The age-specific probability of long-term disability is about the same as that of death and increases with age at an increasing rate. The main factors producing disability are the same as the main causes of death. Despite the high frequency and severity of loss, insurers have been reluctant to provide guaranteed renewable protection against long-term disability. The poor experience of companies in this field during the great depression is largely responsible for this attitude. Inadequate data for determining premiums, weak underwriting and a too generous claim policy were among the major reasons for these losses. Difficulties of properly defining disability, problems of moral hazard, the dangers of over-insurance and the difficulties of obtaining sound and applicable data have caused many companies to avoid the line entirely and others to approach only with the greatest caution. He was a professor of mathematics at Samuel Huston College continuing to serve at Huston-Tillotson College after it merged with Tillotson College in 1952. He was dean from 1960 to 1965, then served as President from 1965 to 1988: During his tenure, he established endowed professorships, including the Marcet Alice Hines Endowed Professorship named in honour of his late wife who served as a member of the faculty for 18 years. He also facilitated new construction projects and campus renovations, increased faculty and staff compensation, and guided the institution to enrolment increases. King was an extremely effective fundraiser for Huston-Tillotson. He viewed himself as a "professional beggar" on behalf of the college. Over the years, King raised$4.9 million for the college. At one point when the college was in a precarious cash-flow position, he obtained a second-lien mortgage on his family home to meet the school's payroll. He travelled extensively to raise funds and to recruit students. He made sure that students who did not go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays were not left on campus and often invited them to his own home to share his family's holiday dinner.

He died on 3 August 2011 in Austin, Texas.

27. Name: Israel Everett Glover.
Place of Birth: Oxford, North Carolina, USA.
Date of Birth: 13 February 1913.
Year of Degree: 1959.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: On analytic functions having as singular sets certain closed and bounded sets.
University: Oklahoma State University.
Biographical Data:
Glover was the son of the farmer Robert Israel Glover and his wife Hattie Belle Howell who was a teacher. Robert and Hattie were married in 1896, Robert being 25 years older than his wife. This was Robert Glover's second marriage, the first being to Malinda Parham in 1875. I E Glover was the fifteenth and youngest child of Robert Glover who had 14 older half-siblings or siblings. He was awarded a B.S. from Johnson C Smith University, an A.M. from the University of Michigan and then undertook further study at the University of Michigan, 1937-38, 1939-40, and in the summer of 1940. He was on the Physical Science staff at Fayetteville State Teachers College and later at Prairie View A & M College. While at Prairie View he published Analytic Functions with an Irregular Linearly Measurable Set of Singular Points in the Canadian Journal of Mathematics in 1952. It begins:
V V Golubev has constructed, by using definite integrals, various examples of analytic functions having a perfect nowhere-dense set of singular points. These functions were shown to be single-valued with a bounded imaginary part. In attempting to extend his work to the problem of constructing analytic functions having perfect, nowhere-dense singular sets under quite general conditions, he posed the following question: Given an arbitrary, perfect, nowhere-dense point-set E of positive measure in the complex plane, is it possible to construct, by passing a Jordan curve through E and by using definite integrals, an example of a single-valued analytic function, which has E as its singular set, with its imaginary part bounded.
The Prairie View Standard reported:
Israel Everett Glover, Head of the Department of Mathematics [at Prairie View A and M College], received the doctor of philosophy in mathematics at the Sixty-Fourth Commencement of Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, May 24 1959.
The Preface to his thesis reads:
The scope of this study is primarily concerned with the construction of analytic functions having, as singular sets, certain closed and bounded sets. In connection with the functions constructed, I show that they are: (1) analytic in the extended complex plane except at points of the given closed and bounded set, (2) single valued in the complement of this set, and (3) has each point of the given set as a singular point. The ideas for this thesis evolved while I was a student in the Department of Mathematics at Oklahoma State University working with Dr O H Hamilton. I wish to express my gratitude to Dr Hamilton for his sound and patient counsel, his helpful criticism, and kind interest given me in the preparation of this thesis. I am also indebted to the John Hay Whitney Foundation for a grant, which made the preparation of this thesis possible.
In fact he was the first African American to be awarded a Ph.D. in mathematics by Oklahoma State University. He was later appointed as Chairman of the Department of Mathematics at Florida A & M University in Tallahassee, Florida where he presided at the General Session of the five hundred and ninety-fourth meeting of the American Mathematical Society held at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University and at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida in November 1962. He was director of the Mathematics Summer School of the Florida A & M University in 1964.

Glover died of pneumonia and congestive heart failure at Lake Taylor City Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia on 12 March 1975.

28. Name: Laurence Raymond Harper Jr.
Place of Birth: Atlanta Fulton, Georgia, USA.
Date of Birth: 10 December 1929.
Year of Degree: 1959.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Some Properties of Partially Stable Algebras.
University: University of Chicago.
Biographical Data:
Harper was the son of Laurence Raymond Harper Sr., a mathematician with an M.A. from New York University who taught at Paine College, and his wife India Neddie Rucker who was a teacher. After elementary school in Augusta, Richmond, Georgia, he studied at Paine College, a Methodist college for African American students in Augusta, Georgia. He was an undergraduate at Talladega College, a college for African Americans founded in Alabama in 1865. He was appointed to the University of Minnesota in 1956 as a member of the Science, Literature and the Arts Mathematics Department in Folwell Hall. He married Kathryn Carter on 29 December 1957. She was the daughter of Artemus Murray Carter who worked for the Pilgrim Health and Life Insurance Company. Laurence Harper was a mathematics professor at the University of Minnesota for 47 years. Larry, as he was known, devoted his life to teaching and to his family. The following was written following his death in 2002 in the University Senate Minutes:
He taught students young and old in day school, evening school, and summer school. In recent years he has been volunteering for the Minneapolis School System as a tutor for all sorts of students who have had various types of 'disadvantages' ( people off the streets, recent immigrants, etc.). They needed help from '15 grade arithmetic up to the GED level.  Larry was a long-time supporter of Gopher football, be it rain, shone, or 10 below zero. His most important interest was his family. He is survived by his wife of 46 years, Kathryn Carter Harper. The four children are Kathryn Gilbertson, Laurence R Harper III, Susan Ritten, and David Harper.
He died 9 July 2002 in Atlanta, Fulton, Georgia.

29. Name: Beauregard Stubblefield.
Place of Birth: Navasota, Texas, USA.
Date of Birth: 31 July 1923.
Year of Degree: 1960.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Some compact product spaces which cannot be imbedded in euclidean n-space.
University: University of Michigan.
Thesis advisor: Gail Sellers Young, Jr.
Biographical Data:
Stubblefield was the son of the watchmaker Clayton S Stubblefield and his wife Josephine Odessa Taylor who was a teacher. He was the second of his parents four children, having an older brother Cedric, a younger sister Iris and a younger brother Elwyn. The family moved to Houston when he was a young child. He attended Burrus Elementary and Junior High School, moving to Booker T Washington High School, a school for African Americans in Dallas, Texas, graduating in 1940. He then entered Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical College on 5 September 1940 where he was taught mathematics by Clarence Francis Stephens. His remarkable mathematical abilities were quickly seen by Stephens who gave him one-to-one tuition. Stubblefield had been taught watchmaking by his father and was able to earn enough money to support his education. He graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in 1943 and, continuing to study supported by a scholarship, he was awarded a Master's Degree in 1945. His Master of Science thesis, supervised by A W Randall, was Computation Of The Real And Complex Roots Of Algebraic And Transcendental Equations.

Despite his excellent record, he was turned down for graduate work at several universities. When he received no answer from the University of Michigan, he went there in person and, impressed by his determination, he was offered a place. When he was told that since he had funding from Texas, he would have to pay Michigan more, he left and worked for the Hollis Jewelery store as a watchmaker for several years earning money to continue his studies. Returning to the University of Michigan, he was awarded an M.S. in 1951. He was appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Liberia at Monrovia from 1952-1956, then worked as a Research Mathematician at Detroit Arsenal 1957-59. During this time he was undertaking research for his Ph.D. He published results from his thesis in the paper Some imbedding and nonimbedding theorems for n-manifolds (1962).

He was an assistant Professor of Mathematics at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey (1960-1961), then an associate Professor of Mathematics at Oakland University in Michigan (1961-1967). After a spell as a Visiting Professor and Visiting Scholar at Texas Southern University, he was appointed Director of Mathematics in the Thirteen College Curriculum Program in 1969. In the paper New Approaches to General Education Mathematics for Developing Colleges (1971) he explained about this Program:
The Thirteen College Curriculum Program is a consortium of developing colleges which aims to improve freshman instruction and curriculum materials. As a large and promising project it is supported by private and public funds. ... The Program was launched in the Summer of 1967 with a writing conference. The conferees devised a new freshman program which attempted to release students from intellectual ruts in formalism and boredom. The course was called "Quantitative and Analytical Thinking," and the materials and techniques were tested on the thirteen campuses the following academic year. (Participants worked in close liaison with curriculum experts of the Curriculum Resources Group of the Institute for Services to Education who provided much of the inspiration for the emergent Thirteen College philosophy and techniques.) This pattern was repeated in successive years.
He was Professor of Mathematics at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina (1971-1976), and then at the U.S. Department of Commerce in Boulder, Colorado where he worked until he retired in 1992. He died on 17 January 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Place of Birth: Kingston, Jamaica.
Date of Birth: 27 May 1928.
Year of Degree: 1960.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title:  Singular Non-Linear Integral Equations With Complex Valued Kernels of Type N.
University: University of Illinois.
Biographical Data:
Charles Costley was the son of David Alexander Costley II (1902-1930) and his second wife Emeline Retilda Sylvester who had been born in Mount Charles, Saint Andrew, Jamaica to James Sylvester and Rosanne Crosdale on 24 September 1902. Costley received his early education at Mico Practicing School and Kingston Technical School both in Kingston, Jamaica. He then went to the Mico Teachers Training College where he studied from 1947 to 1949 for his Teacher's Diploma which he was awarded in 1949. The Mico College had been founded in 1836 and is one of the oldest teacher training colleges in the world. In 1950 Costley was appointed as a teacher at the Central Branch Primary School in Kingston and also became an instructor at the Mico Training College from 1951 to 1953.

As a colleague Charles was always the perfect gentleman, always arriving early at the office and always wearing a three-piece suit and tie. During this period the undergraduate teaching load was heavier than today, and Charles worked hard on his undergraduate courses. If he was not teaching he was always available to students and his experience as a school teacher helped students who had who had problems. Also during his early years at McGill he was practically the unofficial Jamaican Consul, until he eventually had to have an unlisted phone number.
Between 1970 and 1973, Costley published eight papers: On singular normal linear integral equations (1970); On Carleman integral operators (1970); On a solution of the Hammerstein equation with singular normal kernels (1970); On closed integral operators (1970); On a solution of the Hammerstein equation (1971); On sequence of additive set functions (1972); On some functional equations of Carleman (1972); and On Trjitzinsky monogenic functions (1973).

The Resolution by McGill University following Costley's death states:
Charles always kept up his ties with Jamaica, and spent one of his sabbaticals at the University of the West Indies at Kingston, and tried to widen the Mathematics program there. He always intended to retire there. In his later years when his family was mostly living in New York, Charles did not get the chances to know the younger members of the department as well as his earlier colleagues. However his older colleagues always found him helpful and forthcoming when they needed help, and remember him as being very conscientious in preparing assignments and exams. He never complained about his workload, and it was with regret many of us remembered his retirement.
He died on 18 March 1997 at Mount Vernon, Westchester, New York.

31. Name: Joshua Allensworth Leslie.
Place of Birth: Savannah, La Mar, Jamaica.
Date of Birth: 18 February 1933.
Year of Degree: 1960.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title:  Sur l'existence des groupes simpliciaux minimaux.
University: University of Paris.
Biographical Data:
Joshua Leslie was the son of George Augustus Leslie (born 1891) and Margaret Isadore Allen (born 1894). They were in the real estate business and were married on 8 May 1928 in Kingston, Jamaica. On 10 June 1936 the family arrived in New York having sailed on the Toloa from Kingston, Jamaica. In 1940 Joshua was living with his parents on West 111th Street, New York, and studying at elementary school:
In High school, Leslie read Plato's assertion that mathematics is the perfect form of human reasoning. "I agreed with him," Leslie recalls. "And I still regard mathematics as the only certain form of reasoning," ... Leslie did well in chemistry in high school, and for a while he thought of majoring in chemistry. However, he decided that he was not interested in experimental science.
By 1950 he was living with his mother in Chicago, Illinois, studying at the University of Chicago. He was awarded a Bachelor's Degree by the University of Chicago in 1954:
As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, Leslie was impressed with Henri Cartan, a French professor of mathematics who visited the university. "I was much taken by the clarity of his thinking, and I went to the University of Paris at the Sorbonne to do graduate work with him," Leslie says.
On 16 July 1954 he flew from New York to Paris where he began studying at the University of Paris. He returned to New York on 21 September 1958 giving his permanent address as Paris. He was awarded his doctorate from the University of Paris in 1960. After the award of his doctorate, Leslie was appointed to the University of Ibadan in Nigeria as an assistant professor in 1960, promoted to associate professor in 1962, and to full professor in 1965. He published some excellent papers during these years: Modules simpliciaux sur une algèbre simpliciale (1959); Sur l'existence des groupes simpliciaux minimaux (1960); Topologie algebrique - Sur les operations cohomologiques (1963); and Sur l'intégration dans les groupes de Whitehead gradués (1964). He was invited to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton where he worked from September 1965 to July 1966. Aderemi Kuku said in an interview:
I was offered a position as an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Ife (1965). At the same time, I registered for higher degree (masters) at Ibadan. Luckily for me, my supervisor, Professor Joshua Leslie, who was a well-known mathematician, was just returning from a sabbatical spent as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton, New Jersey, USA. Again, very few black people have ever been members there, and in fact, even when I became a member of IAS much later, I was still one of the few blacks to go there. But the important thing is that this man had just returned from sabbatical at IAS Princeton, where he met Professor Hyman Bass, who was one of the mathematicians developing the field where I am now. Then he (Leslie) told me, because I was interested in algebra and related mathematics, that there is something new going on at Princeton that if I can produce a dissertation on it that I would be in good shape.
Leslie had a second visit to the Institute for Advanced Study from September 1969 to March 1970. He was also a visiting professor at Northeastern University in Boston at this time. When offered a professorship at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, he accepted, deciding to stay in America so he could care for his aging mother. Before taking up the post, he spent the year 1970-71 at the University of California, Berkeley. He married Abiodun Omolara Ogundipe in 1970; they had two children Rachel and Isis but were divorced in 1977. In that year he married Annie Ruth Johnson.

He was awarded a Major Research Instrumentation grant to study the application of topology and group theory to solving differential equations. He became a US citizen in March 1986, then spent September 1987 to March 1988 as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. In 1990 he was appointed as Professor of Mathematics at Howard University in Washington D.C. In 1995 he put himself forward for a member of the American Mathematical Society Council. His statement reads:
I am concerned that the putting in question of affirmative action in academia will be a setback for women and minority mathematicians long before its goals will have been met.
He made his views on minorities and women clear in the following statement:
Dr Leslie believes that the U.S. must mobilise the energies of minorities and women in order to remain a great nation. "The future of minorities and science is synonymous with the future of science and the U.S.," he asserts. "Minorities must come to see science and engineering as careers to gratify their material and intellectual needs and to provide socially upward mobility - careers that are just as attainable as those in athletics, law, and business. Programs like the Major Research Instrumentation, coupled with the necessary educational opportunities, can make this view a reality.

32. Name: Argelia Velez-Rodriguez.
Place of Birth: Havana, Cuba.
Date of Birth: 23 November 1936.
Year of Degree: 1960.
Degree: Ph.D.
Thesis title: Determination of Orbits Using Talcott's Method.
University: University of Havana.