William Thomas Fletcher is an American mathematician.

Education

He received the B.S.(

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some So ...

) and M.S. degrees (major in mathematics) from

North Carolina Central University North Carolina Central University (NCCU or NC Central) is a public historically black university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by James E. Shepard in affiliation with the Chautauqua movement in 1909, it was supported by private funds from b ...

(NCCU), Durham, NC in 1956 and 1958 respectively. He received the Ph.D. degree in mathematics from the University of Idaho in 1966.

Early career

In 1957 Dr. Fletcher accepted his first teaching position in the department of mathematics at LeMoyne-Owen College,

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

, where he served as chairman until 1972. For the ten-year period 1962–72 Fletcher pursued summer employment as a mathematical applications computer programmer in industry, business, and government at IBM Mohansic Laboratory (Yorktown Heights, NY), Western Electric (Hopewell, NJ), the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (Livermore, CA), and the US Departments of Commerce (Washington, DC), Agriculture (St. Paul, Minn), and Energy (Livermore, CA).

NCCU

In 1972 Fletcher returned to NCCU as professor and chairman of the mathematics department where he joined his former teacher and mentor,

Marjorie Lee Browne Marjorie Lee Browne (July 2, 1914 – October 19, 1979) was a mathematics educator. She was one of the first African-American women to receive a PhD in mathematics. Early life and education Marjorie Lee Browne was a prominent mathematician and ...

, the second African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Mathematics. During his 25-year tenure at NCCU, Fletcher instituted a BS degree in computer science; wrote petition to obtain a chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon, honorary national mathematics society promoting scholarly activity in mathematics, organized the Marjorie Lee Browne Distinguished Alumni Lectures Series; developed, with two other alumni the Marjorie Lee Browne Memorial Scholarship; led several summer institutes for science and math teachers; organized a Department Speaker Bureau; developed, with other department members, the Mathematics Department Resource Learning Center;and was the principal writer of a proposal to establish a chapter of

Sigma Xi Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society () is a highly prestigious, non-profit honor society for scientists and engineers. Sigma Xi was founded at Cornell University by a junior faculty member and a small group of graduate students in 1886 ...

at NCCU.

Professional memberships and awards

He held membership in several professional organizations; served on several boards including the North Carolina State Board of Science and Technology; received several awards including outstanding teacher of the year (1990); the Year 2000 NC State Award in Science,The North Carolina Awards
The State Library of North Carolina. Accessed January 24, 2010 the highest award that the Governor of NC can bestow upon a citizen. He was the recipient of the 2005 Durham County and North Carolina State Jaycees awards for outstanding community service.

Publications

* "On the Decomposition of Associative Algebras of Prime Characteristic", Journal of Algebra, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1970, pp. 227–236. * "On Whitehead's Second Lemma for Lie Algebras", ''International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences'', Vol. 29, No. 3, 1982, pp. 521–523. * "On the Structure of Associative Algebras Relative to Their Radicals", ''Rev. Roumaine Math. Pures Appl.'', Vol. 29, Vol. 4, 1984, pp. 301–307. * "Implementing the Recommendation of CUPM in A Small Mathematics Department", ''Newsletter, CUPM''; The Mathematical Association of America, 1970. * "The Nature of Mathematics and Its Importance in a Liberal Education", ''The Mathematics Newsletter'', Vol. VII, No. 2, University of Idaho, 1965. * "The Mathematics Learning Center", ''Proceedings of the ICMI-JSME Regional Conference on Mathematics Education'', 1983. * ''Some Optimizations of the ANIMAL Code'', Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Technical Publication; University of California, 1975. * "Marjorie Lee Browne – A Biography", ''Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History'', New York: Columbia University, 1994. * "

– An American Mathematician", ''Twentieth-Century Scientists'', Gale Research, Inc., Detroit, MI

References

*Scott W. Williams
William Thomas Fletcher
''Mathematicians of the African Diaspora'', Mathematics Department,

State University of New York at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fletcher, William Thomas 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Year of birth missing (living people) Living people North Carolina Central University alumni North Carolina Central University faculty LeMoyne–Owen College faculty