Jones, Eleanor Green Dawley

Impact on the world

Mentored as a Howard University undergraduate by Elbert Frank Cox and David Blackwell, both already profiled in this collection, Jones earned her PhD in mathematics from Syracuse University in 1966 while raising young children alone after relocating there to support her family, becoming one of the first African American women to hold that degree; she went on to chair the mathematics department at Norfolk State University starting in 1968 for more than three decades, served as vice president of the National Association of Mathematicians starting in 1975, and sat on the governing boards of the Mathematical Association of America and the Association for Women in Mathematics, receiving NAM's Distinguished Service Award in 1994.

Life & background

Born Eleanor Green on August 10, 1929, in Norfolk, Virginia, the second of six children of a postal carrier and a former domestic worker who both insisted all six children attend college, she graduated cum laude in mathematics from Howard University in 1949 and earned a master's there in 1950, taught at her own alma mater, Booker T. Washington High School, then joined Hampton Institute as a mathematics instructor in 1955. After Norfolk's public schools closed rather than integrate in 1957, she continued teaching and raising a family before moving to Syracuse, New York, in 1962 to pursue doctoral study while supporting her children alone, completing her PhD in 1966 with a dissertation on abelian groups and their endomorphism rings. She returned to Hampton Institute as department chair in 1967, then joined Norfolk State College (now University) in 1968, remaining on its mathematics faculty for more than 30 years until her 2003 retirement. She died March 1, 2021, in Virginia Beach at age 91.

Sources

1. The HistoryMakers; Mathematicians of the African Diaspora (SUNY Buffalo); African American Registry; The Virginian-Pilot (obituary)