Ella Louise Stokes Hunter (died 1988) was an American mathematics educator who became the first

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

woman to earn a degree at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...

. She taught for many years at Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute and Virginia State College, two names for what is now

Virginia State University Virginia State University (VSU or Virginia State) is a public historically Black land-grant university in Ettrick, Virginia. Founded on , Virginia State developed as the United States's first fully state-supported four-year institution of high ...

Early life and education

Hunter was originally from

Petersburg, Virginia Petersburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 33,458. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines Petersburg (along with the city of Colonial Heights) with Din ...

. After studying at Peabody High School in Petersburg and the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute, the predecessor institution to Virginia State, she went to

Howard University Howard University (Howard) is a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity" and accredited by the Middle States Commissi ...

, joined the

Alpha Kappa Alpha Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. () is the first intercollegiate historically African American sorority. The sorority was founded on January 15, 1908, at the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C., by a group of sixteen stud ...

sorority, and graduated in 1920. She earned a master's degree in education from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1925. Although African American women such as

Alberta Virginia Scott Alberta Virginia Scott (c. 1875 — August 30, 1902) was an American educator. She was the first African-American graduate of Radcliffe College, in 1898. Early life Alberta Virginia Scott was born near Richmond, Virginia. Her mother worked as a c ...

had previously graduated from

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

, she may have been the first to earn a degree from Harvard proper. Later in life, while working as a faculty member at Virginia State, Hunter became a doctoral student at the

, studying mathematics education and doing her doctoral dissertation research on the transition from high school to college mathematics. She completed her Ph.D. in 1953, becoming the first African-American woman to earn a degree at the university, two months after another doctoral student in education, Walter N. Ridley, became the first African-American with a degree from the University of Virginia.

Career and later life

After graduating from Howard University, Hunter became an instructor at the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute, where she taught for many years. In 1921, she was one of six instructors there who banded together to found the Delta Omega graduate chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha (originally called the Nu chapter), and later she became its first historian and eighth president. On the faculty at the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute, she met

John McNeile Hunter John McNeile Hunter (January 23, 1901 – July 1979) was an American physicist and chemist, and the third African American person to receive a PhD in physics in the United States. He spent the entirety of his career as a professor of physics at ...

, who began teaching electrical engineering there in 1925 and later became the third African American to earn a doctorate in physics. They married in 1929, and their daughter Jean, later a research psychologist, was born in 1938. Hunter became "known for her mentorship of Black students, particularly Black women studying math". Mathematician Linda B. Hayden recalls her as one of the faculty mentors who encouraged her to go on to graduate study. Mathematician

Gladys West Gladys Mae West (née Brown; born October 27, 1930) is an American mathematician known for her contributions to the mathematical modeling of the shape of the Earth, and her work on the development of the satellite geodesy models that were even ...

saw Hunter and her husband as "the first model of a power couple", and Hunter as a mentor who "still had something to prove, and maybe she felt like she was carrying the weight of other women on her shoulders". By 1948 she had been promoted to associate professor. After retiring from Virginia State University, Hunter continued to teach at

Saint Paul's College (Virginia) Saint Paul's College was a private historically black college in Lawrenceville, Virginia. Saint Paul's College opened its doors on September 24, 1888, originally training students as teachers and for agricultural and industrial jobs. By the lat ...

. She died in Petersburg in 1988.

Recognition

The annual student research conference at the University of Virginia was renamed as the Hunter Research Conference in 2020, in Hunter's honor. The conference had previously been named for

Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry (June 5, 1825 – February 12, 1903) was an American Democratic politician from Alabama who served in the state legislature and US Congress. He also served as an officer of the Confederate States Army in the American C ...

, but his name was removed over his historical advocacy of slavery, opposition to school integration, and service as a confederate officer in the American Civil War.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hunter, Louise Stokes Year of birth missing 1988 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians African-American mathematicians Mathematics educators Howard University alumni Harvard University alumni University of Virginia alumni Virginia State University faculty Saint Paul's College (Virginia) 20th-century American women