Helen Abbot Merrill

Helen Abbot Merrill (1864 – 1949) was an American mathematician, educator and textbook author

Biography
Merrill was born on March 30, 1864, in Llewellyn Park, New Jersey; her father was a New Jersey insurance claims adjustor of colonial stock. She moved to Massachusetts as a child. She entered Wellesley College in 1882, intending to major in Greek and Latin, but switching to mathematics after one year, and graduated in 1886. In 1893 she began teaching at Wellesley while also studying and guest lecturing abroad. In 1903 she earned a PhD in mathematics at Yale University under the direction of James Pierpont. Her thesis was "On Solutions of Differential Equations which possess an Oscillation Theorem." In 1920 she was appointed vice-president of the Mathematical Association of America. Upon her retirement in 1932 from Wellesley, she was given the title professor emerita.

At Wellesley, Merrill wrote two textbooks with Clara Eliza Smith, Selected Topics in Higher Algebra (Norwood, 1914) and A First Course in Higher Algebra (Macmillan, 1917). She also wrote as a popularizer a book titled Mathematical Excursions in 1933.