Hawkins, William Anthony Jr.

Impact on the world

After chairing the mathematics department at the University of the District of Columbia in the mid-1980s, Hawkins took leave in 1990 to direct the Mathematical Association of America's SUMMA program, which over his tenure raised more than $4 million to strengthen minority achievement in mathematics, science, and engineering and supported the National Research Experience for Undergraduates (NREUP); he authored Attracting Minorities into Teaching Mathematics (1994) and Constructing a Secure Pipeline for Minority Students (1995), and received the MAA's 2013 Gung and Hu Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics and the Benjamin Banneker Legacy Award in 2006.

Life & background

Born in Washington, D.C., in 1947 to postal worker William Anthony Hawkins Sr. and dental hygienist Amanda L. Hawkins, he graduated from Archbishop Carroll High School in 1964, briefly attended Merrimack College, and transferred to Howard University, where he studied under Louise Raphael and James Joseph and earned a BS in mathematics in 1968. He earned an MS in physics from Howard and an MA in mathematics from the University of Michigan around 1970, taught at Cardozo High School and Federal City College (later the University of the District of Columbia) in Washington, then returned to the University of Michigan to complete a PhD in mathematics in the early 1980s under James S. Milne. He chaired UDC's mathematics department in the mid-1980s before his long tenure directing the MAA's SUMMA program, periodically returning to UDC as an associate professor until his 2015 retirement after 45 years as an educator and math promoter. Outside mathematics, he has served for decades as a Catholic deacon at parishes in Washington's Ward 7 and Ward 8.

Sources

1. The HistoryMakers; Mathematicians of the African Diaspora (SUNY Buffalo); East of the River (Washington, D.C. community news); Mathematically Gifted & Black