Winifred Edgerton
Winifred Edgerton was the first woman to earn a doctorate at Columbia University. She was born on September 24, 1862, in Ripon, Wisconsin, and later moved with her family to New York City. Winifred graduated from Wellesley College with an exceptional ability in mathematics and astronomy. She then moved on to work at the Harvard Observatory.
Through Melvil Dewey (as in the Dewey Decibel System), who was serving as the Columbia librarian, Winifred met with the Columbia President F. A. P. Bernard, who tried to open the University to women.
After working there at graduate school for two years, in 1886 she was the first woman to receive a Columbia Ph. D. She also received a standing ovation which went on for over two minutes,
She had leaned towards becoming a professor, and then met her husband, John Hamilton Merrill, and chose marriage over professing. Eventually, they moved to Albany, after her husband would not let her have a job he would take. Even after this move, he still forbade her to do much work that he called unladylike.
She had four children, and in 1906 founded Oaksmere School for Girls, which she ran for twenty years afterwards.
John Hamilton Merrill died in 1961. After his death, Winifred Edgerton Merrill
perused a much more settling career as a librarian, until two years before her death. She passed away September 6th, of 1951, at Fairfield, Connecticut, at the ripe age of 88.
Until this day, Mrs. Winifred Edgerton Merrill is known as one of the most motivating women in the history of mathematics.
By: Jessica