Mary Shore Walker (1882–1952) was the first woman faculty member at the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Universit ...

, and taught in the department of

Mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

. She was born in 1882. She earned her B.A. and M.A. at the

in 1903 and 1904, respectively. The thesis she wrote for her M.A. was titled, "On finite groups with special reference to Klein’s ikosaeder.” While at the University of Missouri, she studied with

Earle Hedrick Earle Raymond Hedrick (September 27, 1876 – February 3, 1943), was an American mathematician and a vice-president of the University of California. Education and career Hedrick was born in Union City, Indiana. After undergraduate work at ...

Oliver Dimon Kellogg Oliver Dimon Kellogg (10 July 1878 – 27 August 1932) was an American mathematician. His father, Day Otis Kellogg, was a professor of literature at the University of Kansas and editor of the American edition of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. ...

, and W. D. A. Westfall. She became an Assistant in Mathematics there in 1905, and was promoted to Instructor in Mathematics in spring 1907. She obtained leaves and started her graduate work at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1907, and received her PhD in mathematics there in 1909. She titled her dissertation, "A Generalized Definition of an Improper Multiple Integral." While at Yale, she met

Albert Wallace Hull Albert Wallace Hull (19 April 1880 – 22 January 1966) was an American physicist and electrical engineer who made contributions to the development of vacuum tubes, and invented the magnetron. He was a member of the National Academy of Scienc ...

, a PhD candidate in

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

and her future spouse. Once she earned her PhD, she returned to the University of Missouri and continued to teach there as an instructor in Mathematics. She worked until her marriage to Hull in 1911, and is said to have been a gifted teacher. Her freshman classes "made math sound like poetry." She died in 1952.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Walker, Mary Shore 1882 births 1952 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians University of Missouri alumni University of Missouri faculty Mathematicians from Missouri Yale University alumni 20th-century American women mathematicians