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Helen Abbot Merrill

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Helen Abbot Merrill
Wellesley College Mathematics Class
BornMarch 30, 1864
Llewellyn Park, Orange, New Jersey
DiedMay 1, 1949
Scientific career
ThesisOn Solutions of Differential Equations Which Possess an Oscillatoin Theorem (1903)
Julia Warren, Helen Abbot, Cornelia Sattler, Ruth Lane, Ruth Mason, Clara Searle, Mabel Clarke

Helen Abbot Merrill (1864 – 1949) was an American mathematician, educator and textbook author[1]

Biography

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Merrill was born on March 30, 1864, in Llewellyn Park, New Jersey;[2] her father was a New Jersey insurance claims adjustor of colonial stock. She moved to Massachusetts as a child. She entered Wellesley College in 1882, intending to major in Greek and Latin, but switching to mathematics after one year, and graduated in 1886.[2] In 1893 she began teaching at Wellesley while also studying and guest lecturing abroad. In 1903 she earned a PhD in mathematics at Yale University under the direction of James Pierpont. Her thesis was "On Solutions of Differential Equations which possess an Oscillation Theorem."[3] In 1920 she was appointed vice-president of the Mathematical Association of America. Upon her retirement in 1932 from Wellesley, she was given the title professor emerita.

At Wellesley, Merrill wrote two textbooks with Clara Eliza Smith, Selected Topics in Higher Algebra (Norwood, 1914) and A First Course in Higher Algebra (Macmillan, 1917).[4][5] She also wrote as a popularizer a book titled Mathematical Excursions in 1933.[6]

Bibliography

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  • C. Henrion "Helen Abbot Merrill" in Women of Mathematics: A Bibliographic Sourcebook L. Grinstein, P. Campbell, ed.s New York: Greenwood Press (1987): 147 - 151

References

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  1. ^ Helen Abbot Merrill - Agnes Scott College
  2. ^ a b Riddle, Larry (February 25, 2016), "Helen Abbot Merrill", Biographies of Women Mathematicians, Agnes Scott College
  3. ^ Merrill, Helen A. (1903). "On Solutions of Differential Equations Which Possess an Oscillatoin Theorem". Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. 4 (4): 423–433. doi:10.2307/1986411. ISSN 0002-9947. JSTOR 1986411.
  4. ^ Riddle, Larry (February 25, 2016), "Clara Eliza Smith", Biographies of Women Mathematicians, Agnes Scott College, retrieved 2018-05-08
  5. ^ Reviews of A First Course in Higher Algebra:
  6. ^ Reviews of Mathematical Excursions:
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