Person: Falconer, Etta Zuber
Etta Zuber Falconer was an American mathematician and educator. She was one of the earlier African-American women to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- The older girl was Alice with Etta the younger of the two.
- Etta attended schools in Tupelo and completed her school education at George Washington High School.
- Graduating from the High School in 1949 Etta Zuber entered the traditionally Black Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she studied mathematics with chemistry as her minor subject.
- Zuber graduated with a B.A. in 1953 and then went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison to undertake graduate studies.
- For the rest of this biography we will refer to Etta Zuber as Falconer.
- Falconer was awarded her Ph.D. in 1969 for a thesis entitled Quasi group Identities Invariant under Isotopy.
- Two papers by Falconer were based on her thesis.
- In it Falconer characterises the classes of all quasigroups that are isotopic to some special classes of loops.
- Falconer was appointed to the Mathematics Department at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia in 1971 and after spending the academic year 1971-72 there she returned to Spelman College at Professor of Mathematics and Head of the Mathematics Department.
- During her approximately thirty year tenure at Spelman, Falconer has become one of American's most productive, distinguished and influential mathematics and science educators, generously sharing her time, talents, energies, scholarly publications and presentations with thousands of persons throughout the USA.
- Rather remarkably Falconer did not end her education at this point but continued to study.
- When one examines the two papers on quasigroup and loops which we described briefly above, then one cannot help feeling sorry that Falconer did not continue her research in this area.
- Further honours given to Falconer includes the Giants in Science Award from the Quality Education for Minorities Network in 1996 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1996.
Born 21 November 1933, Tupelo, Mississippi, USA. Died 19 September 2002, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
African American, Origin Usa, Women
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
