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J. Ernest Wilkins, Jr. Ethnicity: African American Gender: M Year of Birth: 1923 Place of Birth: Chicago

Education PhD Institution: University of Chicago, 1942 Dissertation: Multiple Integral Problems in Parametric Form in the Calculus of Variations MA Institution: University of Chicago, 1941 AB Institution: University of Chicago, 1940 Biography J. Ernest Wilkins, Jr. lives in Atlanta, Georgia where he is currently working as Distinguished Professor of Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Physics at Clark Atlanta University. Prior to joining the faculty of Clark Atlanta University in September 1990, he had retired from an already exemplary career as a mathematician, physicist, and engineer. Responding to the influence, nurture and guidance of his parents, and developing his talents, he achieved much.

Born on November 23, 1923 in Chicago, Illinois, J. Ernest Wilkins, Jr. entered the University of Chicago to study mathematics at the age of 13. He received his B.S. degree as a Phi Beta Kappa graduate in 1940 at the age of 16, his M.S. degree in 1941 at the age of 17, and his Ph.D. degree in December 1942 at the age of 19. In 1942 he was also a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study. This was the beginning of one of the most exemplary careers of scholarship and application of an American mathematician/physicist/engineer in the 20th century.

David Blackwell added by Wayne Harrison
David Blackwell Born: April 24, 1919; place: Centralia, Illinois AB (1938) University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign; AM (1939) University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign

Ph.D. (1941) Statistics, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign thesis: Some Properties of Markoff Chains; Advisor: Joseph L. Doob


 * Professor Emeritas of Statistics, University of California at Berkeley

Research Intertests: Mathematics

David Blackwell is, to mathematicians, the most famous, perhaps greatest, African Amercan Mathematician. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics in 1938, Master of Arts in Mathematics in 1939, and his Ph.D. in 1941 (at the age of 22), all from the University of Illinois. He is the seventh African American to receive a Ph.D. in Mathematics. He is the first and only African American to be any one of: a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a President of the American Statistical Society, and a Vice President of the America Mathematics Society.

Chronology: David Harold Blackwell grew up in Centralia, Illinois, a town of 12,000 on the "Mason-Dixson Line." He was raised in a family which expected and supported working hard and a little faster than most folk. Blackwell says he was fortunate to attend a mixed school rather than the all black school. While he was growing up, "Southern Illinois was probably fairly racist. But I was not even aware of these problems -- I had no sense of being discriminated against." As a schoolboy, Blackwell did not care for algebra and trigonometry ("I could do it and I could see that it was useful, but it wasn't really exciting.") Geometry turned him on. "The most interesting thing I remember from calculus was Newton's method for solving equations. That was the only thing in calculus I really liked. The rest of it looked like stuff that was useful for engineers in finding moments of inertia and volumes and such." In his junior year he took an elementary analysis course and really fell in love with mathematics. "That's the first time I knew that serious mathematics was for me. It became clear that it was not simply a few things that I liked. The whole subject was just beautiful." Four years later he had a Ph.D.

Dr. Blackwell was appointed a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1941 for a year. At that time, members of the Institute were automatically officially made visting fellows of Princeton University, and thus Blackwell was listed in its bulletin as such. This caused considerable ruckus as there had never been a black student, much less faculty fellow, at the University [most notably it had rejected Paul Robeson soley on race]. The president of Princeton wrote the director of the Institute that the Institute was abusing the University's hospitality by admitting a black.

Elbert Frank Cox added by Sandra Brown (Math112-48G)
Pioneer African American Mathematicians

Elbert Frank Cox (1895-1969). A.B, Indiana University, 1918; Ph.D, Cornell University, 1924. First African American to earn a Ph.D. in Mathematics. Member of the Mathematics faculty at Howard University, 1929-1961. While at Howard, a professional colleague of Dudley Weldon Woodard and William W.S. Claytor. Photograph courtesy of James A. Donaldson, "Black Americans in Mathematics," in Peter Duren, ed., A Century of Mathematics in America, Part III (Providence, Rhode Island: American Mathematical Society, 1989), at page 452.

Introduction

In 1882 the University of Pennsylvania established its Ph.D. program in arts and sciences and ten years later awarded its first doctorate in mathematics. The modern Department of Mathematics at Penn dates from 1899 when mathematics at Penn became fully distinguished from cognate disciplines. Like other departments in the Graduate School, Mathematics admitted women and people of color from its inception. Roxana Hayward Vivian was the first woman to earn the Ph.D., taking her degree in 1901 and later becoming Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Wellesley College. In the years before 1927 four women earned the Ph.D. in Mathematics at Penn.

In 1896 Lewis Baxter Moore was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. at Penn, taking his degree in Classics. Other talented African Americans had preceded him in earning degrees in the College and in Penn's several professional schools. Their contributions to University history were celebrated in A Century of Black Presence, an exhibition opened in 1980 and still on display in the lobby of the DuBois College House. Penn's first African American Ph.D.s in mathematics, however, did not enjoy public recognition until this exhibition was organized in 1998.

Dudley Weldon Woodard  by Lakeisha Phillips
Dudley Weldon Woodard: When Dudley Weldon Woodard (1881-1965) enrolled in the Graduate School at Penn in 1927, he had already accumulated a remarkable set of achievements. He had published his University of Chicago master's thesis in mathematics, "Loci Connected with the Problem of Two Bodies" and had been teaching mathematics at the collegiate level for two decades. He had been a member of the faculty for seven years at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama; for six years at Wilberforce University in Ohio; and since 1920, at Howard University, then the most prestigious African American university in the country. At Howard, he also held the post of Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Though he excelled and was hugely popular as an academic administrator, Woodard was also an intellectual. In the early 1920s he began taking advanced mathematics courses in the summer sessions at Columbia University. It then became clear that he was among the gifted mathematicians in the nation. Columbia's loss was Penn's gain when in 1927 Woodard took scholarly leave from Howard and spent a year at Penn, working under the direction of John R. Kline, one of the best and brightest of Penn's mathematics faculty. On Wednesday, 28 June 1928, Woodard became the 38th person to receive a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Penn. More significantly, Woodard was only the second African American in the nation to receive that degree.

Dr. Woodard returned to Howard, where his career flourished. He established the graduate program in mathematics, obtained the necessary resources and administrative support for a mathematics library, and sponsored visiting professorships and scholarly seminars. When he retired in 1947 as chairman of the department, he had led Howard's mathematics faculty through a quarter century of steady advancement. In an age of discrimination, Dudley Weldon Woodard had competed and triumphed in the face of overwhelming odds. Penn is proud to claim him among its most distinguished alumni.

Tepper Gill added by Patrina Vines
Tepper Gill earned all three of his degrees from Wayne State University- his B.S. in mathematics and physics (1966), his M.S. (1969) and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics (1974). His Ph.D. advisor was also an African American, A. T. Bharucha-Reid.

At Howard University, starting as an Assistant Professor in 1976, Dr. Gill was promoted to Associate Professor in 1981, and Professor in 1988. In 1987 he became the Chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering. He has a joint appointment in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Mathematics. He is also a Professor for the Division of Theoretical Physics at the Instituto per la Ricerca de Base in Italy. He is an editor of the HADRONIC JOURNAL, a periodical with a primary focus in theoretical and mathematical physics.

A Brief Biography

For Gill, the passion for mathematics would take a circuitous route--one marked with an early waning interest in academics. Outside of School, Gill showed promise as a gifted and talented singer and musician. One source of that encouragement and inspiration had been his ninth grade music teacher, George Shirley who subsequently became a singer with the Metropolitan Opera.

Gill's music career might have taking him further had it not been for his dormant academic prowess. Teachers wanted to nominate him for a scholarship in voice, but because his academic record was lackluster, he lost the opportunity. When an opportunity came along to work on a race track, Gill, along with his brother Gus, took it, and left Detroit to take care of horses. Money was scarce, they were young, discrimination was rampant, horse racing towns were often in areas of official racism. Thus, the Gill brothers returned to Detroit, enrolled in night school and began preparing for entrance into college. While Gill studied mathematics, his brother Gus went on to become a medical doctor, after gradating from the Michigan School of Medicine.

Two characteristics of the field of mathematics sparked Gill's budding analytical passions: the sincerity of the professors who encouraged him to persevere and the objectivity with which the assessment of abilities played out in the classroom. For Gill, mathematics became a place where he could both be himself as an African American and where the young men could uncompromisingly mature intellectually.

Graduate students and faculty members along the way had impressed him with the level of passion that they felt for mathematics; it was not unlike what he had felt for music. The outside world also had an impact on Gill's new found love. The Russian Space Satellite, Sputnik had been launched in 1957 and America catapulted into the space race offering talented students, scholarships and opportunities to gain experience and advanced degrees.

Gill's reputation as an up-and-coming leader did not go unnoticed. Prior to completing his dissertation, he was recruited to lead the city of Detroit's Economic Development Corporation (EDC). As Vice President for Planning and Development (1971-1974), he put his sharpened analytical abilities to work on developing opportunities for entrepreneurs and minority businesses committed to helping the city revamp its economic potential. After completing his doctorate and just before joining the faculty of Howard University, he helped start the Organization for Applied Science in Society and served as Vice President for (1974-1976). This was a private non-profit company devoted to the use of operations research and information systems technology in improving public services. He lead a major effort to modernize public housing management throughout the midwest.

Gill's commitment to the community and his love of mathematical research would be a themes throughout his career. Even as he accepted an offer to become an Assistant Professor at Howard University, in Washington, DC, in 1976, he continued to explore ways to expand economic options and opportunities for minorities in science and in the community. At Howard, he used his considerable background to found and direct the Howard University Computational Science and Engineering Research Center (1990-1996). Gill brought the first Super computer to Howard University, through his partnership with the University of Minnesota and the Army High Performance Computing Research Center. For the period of time that Gill directed the center, he brought into the University over $100 million in research grants and contracts, which provided financial support for over 40 faculty members. senior research scientists and young Ph.D. research fellows. In addition, nearly a hundred graduate and undergraduate students were trained and supported by the center.

Still a lover of music, Gill confines his singing to the church.

RESEARCH NOTES

Dr. Gill has 27 publications in mathematics and mathematical physics. (See Selected Publications below) Well-respected in the academic community because of his research, Gill has been a Visiting Professor and Chancellor research fellow in Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley (1981-1982). He has been a research Fellow at the High Energy Astrophysics Laboratory, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greeenbelt, Maryland (1977-1980), Fermi National Accelerator laboratory, Batavia, Illinois (1982) and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC (1983-1985). In 1997, Gill was a Member in the School of Mathematics of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, New Jersey, where he investigated a new implementation of the special theory of relativity which does not require the use of time as a fourth coordinate. His current research interests included relativistic quantum mechanics, classical electrodynamics, non linearly dynamical systems and probability theory.

WILLIAMWALDRONSCHIEFFELINCLAYTOR-XAVIEN
William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor: In 1929-30 William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor (1908-1967) was the most promising student in the inaugural year of Professor Dudley Weldon Woodard's new graduate mathematics program at Howard University. Professor Woodard, fresh from earning his PhD at Penn, recommended Claytor for admission to Penn's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Woodard's teacher at Penn, Professor John R. Kline, agreed to advise Claytor.

Claytor was a brilliant student. He enrolled at Penn in the 1930-31 academic year, won a Harrison Scholarship in Mathematics in his second year, and took the most prestigious award offered at Penn at that time, a Harrison Fellowship in Mathematics, in his third and final year of graduate studies. Claytor's dissertation delighted the Penn faculty, for it provided a significant advance in the theory of Peano continua - a branch of point-set topology in which Kline was an expert. On Wednesday, 21 June 1933, Penn conferred its PhD on Claytor, who thereby became the third African American in the nation to earn the degree in mathematics. When Claytor published his dissertation, he had every reason to expect competing offers from America's leading research universities. But in that era of pervasive racial discrimination only a predominantly African American institution, West Virginia State College, welcomed him to its faculty.

In 1934, Dr. Claytor published his embedding theorem, which stated, "a Peano continuum K is homeomorphic to a subset of the surface of a sphere if and only if it contains neither a primitive skew curve nor a topological image of either of the Figures 7 or 8." (see illustration at the top of this page: Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the National Association of Mathematicians (1980). Photograph courtesy of the National Association of Mathematicians) The Polish mathematician Casmir Kuratowski had introduced Figures 7 and 8, but Claytor advanced the theory and incorporated it into an effective whole. Professional mathematicians began to refer to these Figures as "Claytor curves."

David Blackwell by Robert Moore
David Blackwell is, to mathematicians, the most famous, perhaps greatest, African Amercan Mathematician. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics in 1938, Master of Arts in Mathematics in 1939, and his Ph.D. in 1941 (at the age of 22), all from the University of Illinois. He is the seventh African American to receive a Ph.D. in Mathematics. He is the first and only African American to be any one of: a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a President of the American Statistical Society, and a Vice President of the America Mathematics Society.

Tepper Gill added by Wayne Harrison 03/03/07
Tepper Gill, African American Mathematician (Tepper Gill added by Wayne Harrison)

Born: February 13, 1941; Birthplace: Selma, Alabama (raised in Detroit, Michigan)

BS (1966) Wayne State University; M.S. (1969) Wayne State University

Ph.D. (1974) Mathematics, Wayne State University

Area of Research Interests: Mathematical Physics

Professor of Mathematcs, Howard University

Tepper Gill earned all three of his degrees from Wayne State University- his B.S. in mathematics and physics (1966), his M.S. (1969) and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics (1974). His Ph.D. advisor was also an African American, A. T. Bharucha-Reid.

At Howard University, starting as an Assistant Professor in 1976, Dr. Gill was promoted to Associate Professor in 1981, and Professor in 1988. In 1987 he became the Chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering. He has a joint appointment in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Mathematics. He is also a Professor for the Division of Theoretical Physics at the Instituto per la Ricerca de Base in Italy (added by Wayne Harrison 02/26/07)