Sister Mary Leontius Schulte (September 4, 1901 – March 20, 2000) was an American

nun A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent.''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. X, page 599. The term is o ...

, mathematics educator, and

historian of mathematics The history of mathematics deals with the origin of discoveries in mathematics and the mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and the worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples of new mathematical developments ...

Life

Schulte was born as Catherine Mary Schulte, on September 4, 1901, in

Cleveland, Manitowoc County, Wisconsin Cleveland is a village in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 1,485 at the 2010 census. History The village was named after President Grover Cleveland. The village was formed in 1958 out of the unincorporated communiti ...

, in a large farming family descended from German immigrants. After finishing high school in Manitowoc, she began studying

home economics Home economics, also called domestic science or family and consumer sciences, is a subject concerning human development, personal and family finances, consumer issues, housing and interior design, nutrition and food preparation, as well as texti ...

at the

College of Saint Teresa The College of Saint Teresa was a Catholic women's college in Winona, Minnesota. Previously a women's seminary, it became a college in 1907 and was operated by the Sisters of Saint Francis of Rochester, Minnesota until its closing in 1989. Hi ...

, but graduated in 1923 with a degree in chemistry and three minors including mathematics. She worked as a high school mathematics teacher in

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

from 1923 to 1928, taking vows as a nun in the

Sisters of Saint Francis of Rochester, Minnesota The Sisters of Saint Francis of Rochester, Minnesota is a Roman Catholic religious congregation for women. The congregation was founded in 1877 by Mother Mary Alfred Moes in the Diocese of St. Paul of Minnesota. The motherhouse, which is in Roch ...

in 1927. In 1928, Schulte returned to the study of mathematics as a graduate student at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, primarily taking summer courses there while also becoming an instructor at the College of Saint Teresa. She earned a master's degree in 1931 and completed her Ph.D. in 1935. Her dissertation was supervised by

Louis Charles Karpinski Louis Charles Karpinski (5 August 1878 – 25 January 1956) was an American mathematician. Background Louis Charles Karpinski was born on August 5, 1878, in Rochester, New York. His parents were Henry Hermanagle Karpinski of Warsaw, Poland, an ...

. Although taking a leave to complete her doctorate, Schulte remained at the College of Saint Teresa, earning a promotion to full professor in 1948 and retiring in 1975. In the early 1960s, a local television station broadcast a series of her lectures. After the College of Saint Teresa closed in 1987, Schulte moved to a home for the Sisters of Saint Francis in Rochester, Minnesota, where she died on March 20, 2000.

Book

Schulte's doctoral dissertation, ''Additions in Arithmetic, 1483-1700, to the Sources of Cajori's 'History of Mathematical Notations' and Tropfke's 'Geschichte Der Elementar-Mathematik'', concerned the history of

mathematical notation Mathematical notation consists of using symbols for representing operations, unspecified numbers, relations and any other mathematical objects, and assembling them into expressions and formulas. Mathematical notation is widely used in mathem ...

. It added to the work of

Florian Cajori Florian Cajori (February 28, 1859 – August 14 or 15, 1930) was a Swiss-American historian of mathematics. Biography Florian Cajori was born in Zillis, Switzerland, as the son of Georg Cajori and Catherine Camenisch. He attended schools first ...

and Johannes Tropfke in this area by describing the notation from over 100 mathematical documents that had been collected at the University of Michigan library and at the

Rare Book & Manuscript Library The Rare Book & Manuscript Library is principal repository for special collections of Columbia University. Located in New York City on the university's Morningside Heights campus, its collections span more than 4,000 years, from early Mesopotam ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. In 2015, Docent Press published Schulte's dissertation as a book, ''Writing the History of Mathematical Notation: 1483–1700'', edited by Albrecht Heeffer and Douglas Furman, including also an introduction by Heeffer, bibliographic notes by Furman, and two biographical sketches of Schulte. For this edition of Schulte's work, many instances of mathematical notation, hand-drawn by Schulte for her thesis, were replaced by digital reproductions of the original notations she discusses, showing each notation in its surrounding context.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schulte, Mary Leontius 20th-century American Roman Catholic nuns 20th-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians American historians of mathematics University of Michigan alumni 1901 births 2000 deaths