Aubrey Edward Landry (1880–1972) was a Canadian-American mathematician. He was the dissertation director of many of the earliest women to earn doctorates in mathematics in the United States, including the first African American woman to do so, Euphemia Haynes.[2]
Aubrey Edward Landry | |
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| Born | November 24, 1880 Memramcook, Westmorland, New Brunswick, Canada |
| Died | May 3, 1972 (aged 91) Bethesda, Maryland, USA |
| Citizenship | United States (naturalized October 6, 1913)[1] |
Early life and education
editHe was born in Westmorland, New Brunswick, to Elizabeth R. "Eliza" McSweeney Landry and Tilman T. Landry, and was the oldest of nine children. He received an AB degree (bachelor's) from Harvard University in 1900, a PhD at The Johns Hopkins University in 1907 with the dissertation: "A Geometrical Application of Binary Syzygies" under Frank Morley.[3]
Career and mentorship of women
editLandry's dissertation director was Frank Morley, himself also a frequent advisor to women doctoral candidates (see inset quote below).[4] Landry spent his career at Catholic University of America, where he began as a teaching fellow following his graduation from Harvard. He joined the permanent faculty in 1902 after receiving his doctorate at Johns Hopkins. He served as mathematics department chairman for 45 years and directed 28 dissertations until his retirement in 1952, out of which 18 went to women.[5] Lenore Blum wrote,
Of 229 pre-1940 [women] Ph.D.s in mathematics, more than a third were advised by eight mathematicians: Charlotte Angas Scott and Anna Pell Wheeler (at Bryn Mawr), and six men—Frank Morley (at Johns Hopkins) and A. B. Coble (at Johns Hopkins and Illinois), Aubrey Landry (at Catholic University), Virgil Snyder (at Cornell), and Gilbert Ames Bliss and L. E. Dickson (both at Chicago, where together they advised 30 women Ph.D.s). It is not hard to surmise that each of these men felt secure in his position in mathematics... all but one were at one time president of the American Mathematical Society![6]
All but two of these women were Roman Catholic sisters, a historical phenomenon nationwide because Catholic men's universities were sometimes open by special arrangement to nuns.[7]
Notable women mentored
editThis list is incomplete, as Landry directed the dissertations of at least 18 women. Some of these come from the Mathematics Genealogy Project, and others from Pioneering Women in American Mathematics.[8]
- Mary Gervase Kelley, Ph.D. 1917, Dissertation: "On the Cardioids Fulfilling Certain Assigned Conditions."
- Marie Cecilia Mangold, Ph.D. 1929, Dissertation: "The Loci Described by the Vertices of Singly Infinite Systems of Triangles Circumscribed about a Fixed Conic."
- Leonarda Burke, Ph.D. 1931, Dissertation: "On a case of the triangles in-and-circumscribed to a rational quartic curve with a line of symmetry."
- Mary de Lellis Gough, Ph.D. 1931, first known Irish woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics. Dissertation: "On the Condition for the Existence of Triangles In-and-Circumscribed to Certain Types of Rational Quartic Curve and Having a Common Side."[9]
- Mary Felice Vaudreuil, Ph.D. 1931, Dissertation: "Two Correspondences Determined by the Tangents to a Rational Cuspidal Quartic with a Line of Symmetry."
- Charles Mary Morrison, Ph.D. 1931, Dissertation: "The Triangles In-and-Circumscribed to the Biflecnodal Rational Quartic."
- Mary Domitilla Thuener, Ph.D. 1932, Dissertation: "On the Number and Reality of the Self-Symmetric Quadrilaterals In-and-Circumscribed to the Triangular-Symmetric Rational Quartic."
- M. Helen Sullivan, Ph.D. 1934, Dissertation: "The Number and Reality of the Non-Self-Symmetric Quadrilaterals In-and-Circumscribed to the Rational Unicuspidal Quartic with a Line of Symmetry."
- Mary Laetitia Hill, Ph.D. 1935, Dissertation: "The Number and Reality of Quadrilaterals In-and-Circumscribed to a Rational Unicuspidal Quartic with Real Tangents from the Cusp."
- M. Henrietta Reilly, Ph.D. 1936, Dissertation: "Self-Symmetric Quadrilaterals In-and-Circumscribed to the Plane Rational Quartic Curve with a Line of Symmetry."
- Mary Nicholas Arnoldy, Ph.D. 1937, Dissertation: "The Reality of the Double Tangents of the Rational Symmetric Quartic Curve."
- Mary Charlotte Fowler, Ph.D. 1937, Dissertation: "The discriminant of the sextic of double point parameters of the plane rational quartic curve."
- Catherine Francis Galvin, Ph.D. 1938, Dissertation: "Two Geometrical Representations of the Symmetric Correspondence C(N,N) with Their Interrelations."
- Euphemia Haynes, Ph.D. 1943, Dissertation: "Determination of Sets of Independent Conditions Characterizing Certain Special Cases of Symmetric Correspondences."[10]
Selected publications
edit- A geometrical application of binary syzygies by AE Landry, American Mathematical Society, Jan 10, 1909.[11]
References
edit- ^ "Now American Citizen: Prof. Aubrey Edward Landry Receives Final Papers". The Evening Star. Washington, DC. 6 October 1913. p. 7.
- ^ Lamphier, Peg A.; Welch, Rosanne, eds. (2017). Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection, Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 30. ISBN 9781610696036.
- ^ Aubrey Edward Landry at Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ Green, Judy; LaDuke, Jeanne, eds. (2009). Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's. Washington, DC: American Mathematical Society. p. 52. ISBN 9780821843765.
- ^ Green, Judy; LaDuke, Jeanne, eds. (2009). Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's. Washington, DC: American Mathematical Society. p. 52. ISBN 9780821843765.
- ^ Lenore Blum, "AWM’s First Twenty Years: The Presidents’ Perspectives," in (2005). Case, Bettye Anne; Leggett, Anne M. (eds.). Complexities: Women in Mathematics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 93.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Jensen-Vallin, Jacqueline A.; Beery, Janet L.; Mast, Maura B.; Greenwald, Sarah J., eds. (2017). Women in Mathematics: Celebrating the Centennial of the Mathematical Association of America. New York: Springer International Publishing. pp. 44, 98–99. ISBN 9783319666945.
- ^ "Aubrey Edward Landry". Mathematics Genealogy Project. North Dakota State University.
- ^ SETU launches a new funded PhD in STEM to celebrate Wexford’s Maggie Gough, the first Irish woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics SETU launches a new funded PhD in STEM to celebrate Wexford’s Maggie Gough, the first Irish woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics South East Technological University, MARCH 6, 2023
- ^ Euphemia Lofton Haynes Award Department of Mathematics, The Catholic University of America
- ^ Green, Judy; LaDuke, Jeanne, eds. (2009). Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's. Washington, DC: American Mathematical Society. p. 52. ISBN 9780821843765.