Math Alumnae Project, University of Chicago

Math Alumnae Project, University of Chicago This is a short discussion to go along with the Chicago math alumnae database, aiming to provide context for certain patterns and trends. See also the official History page for the Department of Mathematics.

First, information for the database was collected from several sources:

Professor Jeanne LaDuke of DePaul University generously made her extensive research available;

Diane Herrmann and Peter May contributed data and personal recollections;

Margaret Murray's book Women Becoming Mathematicians has valuable information and insightful analysis;

the Mathematics Genealogy Project seems to have fairly exhaustive data;

U of C has photographs up on the third floor of decades' worth of entering graduate student classes and new instructors and faculty;

since Google made the database searchable, several mathematicians have contacted me directly with information about particular alumnae, for which I am very grateful.

Please feel free to contact me with comments, questions, or suggestions. (I still forward mduchin@math.uchicago.edu, which is good for this purpose.)

The U of C math department began the same year the university opened, in 1892. The distinguished number theorist L.E. Dickson was the first PhD graduate, in 1896. The first woman to earn a PhD in math from U of C, Mary Sinclair, graduated in 1908.

In the 16-year period from 1924-1939, an average of two women per year graduated and got a math job.
In the subsequent 28 years, there were five women in all.
The rate picks back up in 1968 to about 1/year.
1987-2000: 1-3/year
2004-present: tons (though still not in the same proportions as in the 1920s/30s).

...so, what happened??

There are several factors for the sea change, but the obvious one--that WWII changed the climate nationally--is not an adequate explanation. Consider the following information from Margaret Murray's book Women Becoming Mathematicians:

1886-1939: U of C graduated 70 women (#1 in the country); Cornell graduated 29 (#2)
1940-1959: Illinois graduated 14 women (#1); U of C graduated 9 women (#6)

There is a great deal of other period context from the timespan of the data to consider: women's suffrage in 1920 and the surrounding "first wave" feminist movement; community relations in Hyde Park, including the crime boom in the Prohibition era (with Al Capone even living 10 minutes from campus in what is now a university dorm); the wave of Nazi refugees from Europe; post-war and Sputnik pressures on the mathematical climate; the establishment of a Statistics Department in 1949; the social expectations or obligations only levied on women among the graduate students (such as cleaning and secretarial duties); the "second wave" feminist movement in the 1960s-70s; changing attitudes about marrying within the field and related "two body" problems; nepotism laws; and professional shifts, especially the shift towards new doctorates applying for jobs rather than simply being placed by the chairman in a position he found suitable.

While all of this wants scrutiny, I think a simple piece of the story that has major explanatory value for the big transformation in the 1940s has to do with a few influential people and their push for renewed prestige in the department. In particular, Marshall Stone was brought in from Harvard to be the new chairman in 1946. He presided over a period nicknamed the "Stone Age," whose beginning was marked by a swift and stark turnover of the faculty, including the retirement of the two men (Bliss and Dickson) who had served as doctoral advisors for a critical mass of female students, as well as the one woman on the faculty. Stone's attitude was that Chicago should transform itself to become one of the pre-eminent research hubs in the world, as is well documented. There were many women before that time, but it is important to note that they were rarely placed in research universities upon graduating, but virtually always placed in exclusively teaching-focused positions without graduate advising of their own. This existing function of the department was clearly at odds with Stone's vision.

Here's a timeline of certain early periods of chairmanship, to be compared with the alumnae database.

Period (chair) Notes

1908-1927 (Moore) Mac Lane diagnoses that by the end of the Moore chairmanship, Chicago had become a "PhD mill"

1927-1941 (Bliss) Between them, Bliss and Dickson advise around 70 of the 117 dissertations in this period. Mayme Logsdon becomes an Associate Professor.

1946-1952 (Stone) Stone cleans house. (Bliss, Dickson, Logsdon leave in 1946.)

1952-1958 (Mac Lane) A believer in the Stone model.

1958-1962 (Albert) Another Stone disciple.

The story of Mayme Logsdon is particularly interesting and a bit mysterious. She attended Chicago for undergraduate and graduate work and stayed on as an instructor. In the Bliss department, she was promoted to Assistant and then Associate Professor. She seems to have played a role in informally advising many students, and the Genealogy Project credits her as the dissertation advisor for one woman and three men in the 1930s. I can find no record of the circumstances for her departure from Chicago in 1946, though the timing is suggestive.

Here is a quick table comparing the total number of PhDs in the math department in a particular decade (source: Genealogy Project) against the number of women known to have gone on to math jobs (tallied from the database).

Decade Total PhDs Continuing math alumnae

1890s 4 0

1900s 31 2

1910s 54 6

1920s 87 13

1930s 98 23 (peak: 23%)

1940s 38 2

1950s 116 2 (low: 1.7%)

1960s 156 5

1970s 151 4

1980s 123 7

1990s 148 15

200x 135 18 so far

Caveats to accompany the table: the "Total PhD" numbers seem to include some Stats grads, who aren't counted in the alumnae tally, and of course the alumnae database is an ongoing project trying to unite disparate sources and is likely to be incomplete.

More reading on the early history of the Chicago Math Department, from the anthology "A Century of Mathematics in America":

Saunders Mac Lane, Mathematics at the University of Chicago: A brief history
(argues that insular "inheritance principle" in hiring hurt the quality of the department in most areas; reports that there were 51 women to get PhDs at U of C in 1908-1946 period, of whom 50 went on to teach mathematics; interesting discussion/endorsement of "old-boy network" placement system for employment; calls the Bliss department a "diploma mill," attributing to Bliss the view that "what really matters is the research done by a few outstanding students, while in the faculty itself what matters is the research done by a few outstanding professors")

Will Duren, Graduate Student at Chicago in the Twenties
(notes that peer Antoinette Killen Huston "earned her way as graduate student by serving as secretary" to the chairman; reports that Dickson blasted the chairman during a colloquium in the late twenties with "permitting the department to slide into second rate status"; comments that "Graduate students married graduate students, though of necessity only after the man had his degree.")

Marshall Stone, Reminiscences of Life at Chicago
(a fairly bland article except for his implausible formulation that, at the time of his arrival, "Professsors Dickson, Bliss, and Logsdon had all retired fairly recently, and Professors W.T. Reid and Sanger had resigned to take positions elsewhere." Note that Logsdon taught for fifteen more years at the University of Miami after this.)