Walter Richard Talbot (1909-1977) was the fourth

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

to earn a Ph.D. in

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 ...

( Geometric Group Theory) from the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

and Lincoln University's youngest

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

. He was a member of Sigma Xi and Pi Tau Phi. In 1969 Talbot co-founded the National Association of Mathematics (NAM) at Morgan State University, the organization which, nine years later honored him at a memorial luncheon and created a scholarship in his name. In 1990 the Cox-Talbot lecture was inaugurated recognizing his accomplishments together with Elbert Frank Cox – the first African-American to get a doctoral degree in mathematics. Academic positions Talbot held include: Mathematics Department Chair and Professor (Morgan State University); assistant professor, professor, department chair, dean of men, registrar, acting dean of instruction (Lincoln University). Talbot was most widely known for his introduction of computer technology to the school. Talbot's dissertation was entitled ''Fundamental Regions in S(sub 6) for the Simple Quaternary G(sub 60), Type I.''

References

1909 births 1977 deaths African-American mathematicians University of Pittsburgh alumni 20th-century African-American scientists {{US-mathematician-stub