Vivienne Lucille Malone-Mayes (February 10, 1932 – June 9, 1995) was an American

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

and

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

. Malone-Mayes studied properties of functions, as well as methods of teaching mathematics.Vivienne Malone-Mayes Papers
#2072,

The Texas Collection The Texas Collection is one of the special libraries at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Situated in the Carroll Library Building, the Texas Collection serves as a collection of various documents, items and artifacts significant to Texas history. ...

. She was the fifth African-American woman to gain a PhD in mathematics in the United States, and the first African-American member of the faculty of

Baylor University Baylor University is a private Baptist Christian research university in Waco, Texas. Baylor was chartered in 1845 by the last Congress of the Republic of Texas. Baylor is the oldest continuously operating university in Texas and one of the fir ...

Early life and education

Vivienne Lucille Malone was born on February 10, 1932, in

Waco, Texas Waco ( ) is the county seat of McLennan County, Texas, United States. It is situated along the Brazos River and I-35, halfway between Dallas and Austin. The city had a 2020 population of 138,486, making it the 22nd-most populous city in the ...

, to Pizarro and Vera Estelle Allen Malone. She encountered educational challenges associated with growing up in an African-American community in the South, including racially

segregated schools Segregation may refer to: Separation of people * Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space * School segregation * Housing segregation * Racial segregation, separation of humans ...

, but the encouragement of her parents, both educators, led her to avidly pursue her own education. She graduated from A. J. Moore High School in 1948. She entered

Fisk University Fisk University is a private historically black liberal arts college in Nashville, Tennessee. It was founded in 1866 and its campus is a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1930, Fisk was the first Africa ...

at the age of 16 where she earned a bachelor's degree (1952) and a master's degree (1954). Vivienne switched from medicine to mathematics after she began studying under

Evelyn Boyd Granville Evelyn Boyd Granville (born May 1, 1924) was the second African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from an American university; she earned it in 1949 from Yale University. She graduated from Smith College in 1945.. She performed p ...

and

Lee Lorch Lee Alexander Lorch (September 20, 1915 – February 28, 2014) was an American mathematician, early civil rights activist, and communist. His leadership in the campaign to desegregate Stuyvesant Town, a large housing development on the East Side o ...

. Granville was one of the first of five African-American women to earn her Ph.D. in mathematics. When she was in grade 6 she would get bullied by teachers and students. When she would get a low grade all of the teachers and the students would make stereotypes because of her skin color and the fact that she got a low grade, an example of a stereotype that she got a lot was “ see i told you she would fail all, of those people do.” she would always feel like she had let down everybody together with her being the only black woman in her class and all of her classmates ignoring her made it very difficult for her.

Career

After earning her master's, she chaired the Mathematics department at

Paul Quinn College Paul Quinn College (PQC) is a Private college, private Historically black colleges and universities, historically black African Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodist college in Dallas, Texas. The college is affiliated with the African Methodist E ...

for seven years and then at

Bishop College Bishop College was a historically black college, founded in Marshall, Texas, United States, in 1881 by the Baptist Home Mission Society. It was intended to serve students in east Texas, where the majority of the black population lived at the t ...

for one year before deciding to take further graduate mathematics course. She was refused admission at

due to segregation and instead attend summer courses at the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

. After another year of teaching she decided to attend the University of Texas full-time as a graduate student. She was the only African American and only woman in the class, and at first her classmates ignored her. She was not allowed to teach, was unable to attend professor

Robert Lee Moore Robert Lee Moore (November 14, 1882 – October 4, 1974) was an American mathematician who taught for many years at the University of Texas. He is known for his work in general topology, for the Moore method of teaching university mathematics, ...

's lectures, and could not join off-campus meetings because they were held in a coffee shop which could not, under Texas law, serve African Americans. She wrote, "My mathematical isolation was complete", and that "it took a faith in scholarship almost beyond measure to endure the stress of earning a Ph.D. degree as a Black, female graduate student". She participated in civil rights demonstrations, and her friends and colleagues Etta Falconer and

wrote on her death that "With skill, integrity, steadfastness and love she fought racism and sexism her entire life, never yielding to the pressures or problems which beset her path". As an educator, Malone-Mayes's developed novel methods of teaching mathematics including a program using self-paced audio-tutorials. Her mathematical research was in the field of

functional analysis Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure (e.g. Inner product space#Definition, inner product, Norm (mathematics)#Defini ...

, particularly characterizing the growth properties of

ranges In the Hebrew Bible and in the Old Testament, the word ranges has two very different meanings. Leviticus In Leviticus 11:35, ranges probably means a cooking furnace for two or more pots, as the Hebrew word here is in the dual number; or perhaps ...

of nonlinear operators. Malone-Mayes graduated in 1966, with a dissertation entitled "A structure problem in asymptotic analysis". Her doctoral supervisor was Don E. Edmondson. Following graduation, Malone-Mayes was hired as a full-time professor in the mathematics department at Baylor University. Her research there continued to focus on functional analysis; of her two papers, one studies

summability methods In mathematics, a divergent series is an infinite series that is not convergent, meaning that the infinite sequence of the partial sums of the series does not have a finite limit. If a series converges, the individual terms of the series must ...

for the

moment problem In mathematics, a moment problem arises as the result of trying to invert the mapping that takes a measure ''μ'' to the sequences of moments :m_n = \int_^\infty x^n \,d\mu(x)\,. More generally, one may consider :m_n = \int_^\infty M_n(x) \,d ...

as operators on

sequence spaces In functional analysis and related areas of mathematics, a sequence space is a vector space whose elements are infinite sequences of real number, real or complex numbers. Equivalently, it is a function space whose elements are functions from the ...

and the other studies the long-term behavior of a certain

linear ordinary differential equation In mathematics, a linear differential equation is a differential equation that is defined by a linear polynomial in the unknown function and its derivatives, that is an equation of the form :a_0(x)y + a_1(x)y' + a_2(x)y'' \cdots + a_n(x)y^ = b( ...

. Nonetheless, her research was sufficiently innovative for her to qualify for federal grants to support her work, and the latter paper was published in the prestigious

Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society ''Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of mathematics published by the American Mathematical Society. As a requirement, all articles must be at most 15 printed pages. According to the ' ...

. She was soon a full professor. Malone-Mayes had a successful, lengthy career and served on several boards and committees of note, retiring in 1994 due to ill health. She was the fifth African-American woman to be allowed in the White House.

Memberships

She was a member of the board of directors of the

National Association of Mathematicians The National Association of Mathematicians is a professional association for mathematicians in the US, especially African Americans and other minorities. It was founded in 1969.

. She was elected Director-at-large for the Texas section of

Mathematical Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure a ...

and served as director of the High School Lecture Program for the Texas section. She was also active in her local community as a lifetime member of New Hope Baptist Church. She served on boards of directors for

Cerebral Palsy Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of movement disorders that appear in early childhood. Signs and symptoms vary among people and over time, but include poor coordination, stiff muscles, weak muscles, and tremors. There may be problems with sensa ...

Goodwill Industries Goodwill Industries International Inc., often shortened in speech and writing to Goodwill (stylized as goodwill), is an American nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that provides job training, employment placement services, and other community-bas ...

, and Family Counseling and Children. She was on the Texas State Advisory Council for Construction of Community Mental Health Centers and served on the board of the Heart of Texas Region Mental Health and Mental Retardation Center. Vivienne Malone-Mayes was a member of

Delta Sigma Theta Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. () is a historically African American sorority. The organization was founded by college-educated women dedicated to public service with an emphasis on programs that assist the African American community. Delta ...

sorority and served as President of Waco Alumnae Chapter.

Legacy and awards

After Lillian K. Bradley in 1960, Malone-Mayes became one of the first African-American women to receive a PhD in Mathematics from

(and fifth African-American woman in the United States). She was the first African-American member of the faculty at

, and the first African-American person elected to Executive Committee of the

Association of Women in Mathematics The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a professional society whose mission is to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment o ...

. The student congress of Baylor voted her the "Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year" in 1971.

Personal

Malone-Mayes married James Mayes in 1952, and had a daughter, Patsyanne Mayes Wheeler. She died of a heart attack, in Waco, on June 9, 1995, at the age of 63. She is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.

References

*''Notable Women in Mathematics, a Biographical Dictionary'', edited by Charlene Morrow and Teri Perl, Greenwood Press, 1998, pp. 133–137. {{DEFAULTSORT:Malone-Mayes, Vivienne 1932 births 1995 deaths African-American mathematicians 20th-century American educators 20th-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians 20th-century women mathematicians 20th-century American women educators 20th-century African-American women 20th-century African-American educators