Claytor, William Waldron Schieffelin

Impact on the world

Earned his PhD in topology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1933, becoming the third African American to hold a mathematics doctorate and, by some accounts, the first to publish original mathematical research in an accredited journal, with his 1934 and 1937 papers in the prestigious Annals of Mathematics introducing what became known as 'Claytor curves' and resolving an open problem his own advisor had posed; while teaching at West Virginia State College he personally identified and mentored a young Katherine Johnson, already profiled in this collection for her NASA orbital mechanics work, creating an entire geometry course specifically to ensure she received training the college did not otherwise offer.

Life & background

Born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1908 to a vocational arts teacher father, Claytor was recruited by Dudley Woodard, already profiled in this collection, as the most promising inaugural student in Howard University's new graduate mathematics program before earning a fellowship to the University of Pennsylvania, where his dissertation on Peano continua so impressed the faculty that it was published in the Annals of Mathematics, advancing point-set topology theory in ways professional mathematicians came to call 'Claytor curves.' Despite this exceptional early promise, racism systematically blocked every research career path otherwise available to him: the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton rejected his National Research Council fellowship application explicitly because the university's administration believed students might object to a 'colored' researcher's presence, and the University of Michigan, where he completed a prestigious Rosenwald Fellowship and was barred even from attending his own department's research seminars, ultimately declined to offer him the faculty position his colleagues had recommended him for despite student newspaper protests. Confined instead to teaching positions at historically Black institutions including West Virginia State College, where he created an entire dedicated geometry course just to prepare a talented young student named Katherine Johnson for a research career, Claytor wrote in his own later correspondence that the conditions of his work had made it virtually impossible to complete any further original research after his doctoral thesis; he continued making presentations at American Mathematical Society conferences for years even though he was never permitted to stay at the same hotels as his white colleagues, eventually growing too embittered by the accumulated discrimination to continue attending at all, reportedly turning down a later, genuine offer from Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study once it finally came. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, married psychologist Mae Belle Pullins in 1947, the same year he joined Howard University's faculty on the recommendation of statistician David Blackwell, already profiled in this collection, and remained at Howard, eventually chairing its mathematics department, until his 1965 retirement; he died in 1967, and the National Association of Mathematicians' annual Claytor Lecture, established in 1980, continues honoring his name.

Sources

1. MacTutor History of Mathematics; Undark Magazine; Penn Today; University of Pennsylvania Archives; African American Registry