Wheeler, Anna Pell (1883–1966)

views updated

Wheeler, Anna Pell (1883–1966)

American analytical mathematician, educator, and administrator, longtime chair of the mathematics department at Bryn Mawr College, whose achievements helped to break down barriers for women . Born Anna Johnson in Hawarden, Iowa, on May 5, 1883; died on March 26, 1966; buried beside Alexander Pell in the Lower Merion Baptist Church Cemetery, Bryn Mawr; daughter of Amelia (Frieberg) Johnson and Andrew Gustav Johnson; University of South Dakota, A.B., 1903; University of Iowa, A.M., 1904; Radcliffe College, A.M., 1905; University of Chicago, Ph.D., 1910; married Alexander Pell, in Göttingen, Germany, on July 19, 1907 (died 1921); married Arthur Leslie Wheeler, on July 6, 1925 (died 1932).

Awards:

was starred in American Men of Science (1921); elected to Phi Beta Kappa (1926); was the first woman to deliver the Colloquium Lectures at the American Mathematical Society (1927); honorary degree from the New Jersey College for Women (1932) and Mt. Holyoke College (1937); honored by the Women's Centennial Congress (1940); seminar series created in her honor, Bryn Mawr College (1964).

Moved to Akron, Iowa (1892); enrolled at the University of South Dakota (1899); granted scholarship at University of Iowa (1903); granted scholarship at Radcliffe College (1904); awarded Alice Freeman Palmer fellowship at Wellesley College (1906); studied at Göttingen University (1906); taught at the University of South Dakota (1907); returned to Göttingen University (1908); returned to U.S. (1908); enrolled at University of Chicago (January 4, 1909); her husband Alexander Pell suffered a stroke (1911); took over his classes at the Armour Institute of Technology (1911); accepted a position at Mt. Holyoke College (1911); promoted to associate professor (1914); accepted a position at Bryn Mawr College (1918); her father died (1920); succeeded Charlotte A. Scott as chair of the mathematics department, Bryn Mawr College (1924); appointed to the Board of Trustees of American Mathematical Society (1923); promoted to full professor (1925); delivered the Colloquium Lectures at the American Mathematical Society (1927); was editor of Annals of Mathematics (1927); Emmy Noether moved to Bryn Mawr College (1933); death of Emmy Noether (1935); successfully petitioned for an American analog to the German journal Zentralblatt für Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete (1939); retired from Bryn Mawr College (1948).

Selected writings:

"The Extension of Galois Theory to linear differential equations" (master's thesis, Iowa City: University of Iowa, 1904); "On an integral equation with an adjoining condition," in Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (vol. 16, 1910); "Existence theorems from certain unsymmetric kernels," in Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (vol. 16, 1910); "Biorthogonal systems of functions" (Ph.D. thesis, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1910); "Non-homogeneous linear equations in infinitely many unknowns," in Annals of Mathematics (1914); "A general system of linear equations," in Transactions of the American Mathematical Society (vol. 20, 1919); "Linear ordinary self-adjoint differential equations of the second order," in American Journal of Mathematics (vol. 49, 1927); "Spectral theory for a certain class of nonsymmetric completely continuous matrices," in American Journal of Mathematics (vol. 57, 1935).

Anna Pell Wheeler was born Anna Johnson in Hawarden, Iowa, on May 5, 1883, the daughter of immigrants from Lyrestad parish in Skaraborglän, Västergötland, Sweden. Amelia Frieberg Johnson and Andrew Gustav Johnson had arrived in the United States in 1872, and were married soon after. They subsequently moved to Hawarden in 1882, and then to Akron ten years later. It was in Akron that Wheeler first attended public school. A failed farmer, Andrew Johnson became a furniture retailer and undertaker in Akron.

In 1899, Anna enrolled at the University of South Dakota. After a qualifying year as a "sub-freshman," she completed her degree in three years. Her grades in the arts and the social sciences were average, but she was an "A" student in chemistry, mathematics, and physics.

As an undergraduate, Anna had the good fortune to have Alexander Pell as one of her mathematics instructors. Alexander, a Russian revolutionary, had come to the United States in the 1880s. His real name was Sergei Degaev, and he was one of the assassins of Colonel George Sudeykin, an officer in the tsarist secret police. Once in America, Degaev changed his identity, and began a career as a mathematician. Alexander Pell was impressed by Wheeler's rare talent for mathematics, and took considerable pains to advise and assist her on her academic career.

Anna's sister Ester Johnson also attended the University of South Dakota; the two shared many classes, lived with Alexander and his wife Emma Pell , and participated in extra-curricular activities. Anna was secretary-treasurer of the French club, as well as the class historian. It was clear almost from the outset, however, that her principle ability lay in mathematics. In her yearbook, Wheeler wrote beneath her photograph, "I know mathematics better than my own name."

In 1903, she won a scholarship to the University of Iowa. There she took graduate courses and wrote her master's thesis, "The Extension of Galois Theory to Linear Differential Equations." The quality of Wheeler's research won her admission to the Iowa branch of Sigma Xi. While at the University of Iowa, she also taught undergraduate courses in mathematics. Following graduation, Wheeler won a scholarship to attend Radcliffe. There she completed a second master's degree in 1905. For the next year, she remained at Radcliffe on scholarship, taking courses from M. Bôcher, C.L. Bouton, and W.F. Osgood.

[T]here is such an objection to women that they prefer a man even if he is inferior both in training and research.
—Anna Pell Wheeler

Each year Wellesley College offered the Alice Freeman Palmer fellowship to an outstanding female graduate from an American university. In 1906, Wheeler won the grant, beating out four other applicants. She used the money to travel to Germany, where she studied at Göttingen University. One of the stipulations of the Palmer fellowship was that Wheeler remain unmarried during the period of the award. Studying in Germany fulfilled a long-held ambition.

At Göttingen, Wheeler studied under the renowned mathematicians David Hilbert and Felix Klein. She was particularly intrigued by integral equations, a field of mathematics which was gaining increasing prominence at the time. Hilbert, as one the pioneers of integral equations, offered Anna his encouragement and assistance. Integral equations thus became the focus of most of her subsequent research.

Alexander Pell followed her career from a distance, and the two corresponded frequently. He wrote to her sister to express the pride he felt in Wheeler's accomplishments. "I consider her something like a demi-goddess now, for whatever she wants she gets and whatever she studies she makes a success of." When Alexander's wife died in 1904, Anna agreed to marry him over the objections of her family, even though he was 25 years her senior. After their wedding in Germany in July 1907 and the completion of her research at Göttingen, the couple returned to the U.S., where Alexander had recently been appointed the dean of engineering at the University of South Dakota. There Wheeler taught two courses, one on the theory of differential equations, the other on the theory of functions.

Having left her doctoral work unfinished, Wheeler returned to Göttingen University in the spring of 1908 to complete her dissertation. Alexander remained in South Dakota. He was quite at a loss without her, but work and finances prevented him from traveling to Germany. He wrote to his wife, "I am awfully sorry I cannot go this summer to Germany but we must pay our debts and then we can live a little bit better, i.e., we may go to Germany next summer together." In time, Wheeler's family came to accept Alexander, who spent considerable time with them during her absence.

By the fall of 1908, Wheeler was ready to take her doctoral examination. Alexander wrote to her sister in November:

I send you the sample of Anna's dress goods—she has to appear before the examiner in a black dress. Oh, I wish this was all over and I could have her with me again. It is now 8 months since she is gone and I feel very, very lonesome.

During the summer, Alexander Pell had a disagreement with the president of the University of South Dakota which led to Pell's resignation. He accepted a position at the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago.

On the eve of her Ph.D. examination, Wheeler had a falling out as well with David Hilbert. She never explained the circumstances surrounding the event, but she failed to complete her degree at Göttingen. She wrote to Mary Coes , then dean at Radcliffe, stating simply that "in Göttingen I had some trouble with Professor Hilbert and came back to America without a degree." Whatever the circumstances of her failure to complete her degree at Göttingen University, Wheeler remained undeterred. On January 4, 1909, she enrolled at the University of Chicago. She studied under Professors E.H. Moore, F.R. Moulton, and W.D. MacMillan. Wheeler completed her degree in record time, explaining to Coes:

Since my thesis had been written independently of Hilbert, I had a right to use it at C.U. And so after a year of residence I took my degree under Professor E.H. Moore with magna cum laude. I was the second woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Chicago and the first to receive it under Professor Moore.

After graduation, Wheeler taught a class at the University of Chicago, while searching for a full-time teaching position. "I had hoped for a position in one of the good universities like Wisconsin, Illinois, etc.," she wrote a friend, "but there is such an objection to women that they prefer a man even if he is inferior both in training and research." In 1911, when Alexander Pell suffered a stroke, she took over his classes at the Armour Institute of Technology. Wrote Wheeler:

Mr. Pell was sick and they were practically forced to take me for they could not get a man. After a couple of weeks they told Mr. Pell he need not return this semester but take a good rest. I have fifteen hours of subjects in math and have shown them that a woman is capable of doing a man's work in a technical school. The math men at the Univ. of Chicago were very much pleased that at last a woman had the chance to show her ability in such a place as Armour Inst. But I know it will take a great number of years, to break down the prejudice.

Throughout her career, Wheeler was lauded for her teaching skills. A letter from a former president of the University of South Dakota is just one example of the high esteem in which she was held:

She gives all her mind and energy to her teaching and is always willing to assist individual students out of hours. She is instinctively kind and interested thus winning her students to her cause—and her own enthusiasm soon communicates itself to her students.

In 1911, Wheeler accepted a position teaching at Mt. Holyoke College. Originally hired as an instructor, in 1914 she was promoted to the position of associate professor. The same year, she published a paper on linear equations of infinite unknowns. She also did joint research with Ruth L. Gordon , resulting in a work on the highest common factor of two polynomials. Alexander, despite his illness, taught at Northwestern University for one year beginning in 1915. He also remained actively engaged in research, and presented papers in 1915 and 1917 at the conferences of the American Society of Mathematics.

In 1918, a position became available at Bryn Mawr College. Wheeler happily accepted it. Bryn Mawr offered a distinguished graduate program under the direction of Charlotte A. Scott . Wheeler hoped to assume the position of chair upon Scott's retirement and would indeed succeed Scott in 1924.

In 1920, Wheeler was promoted to full professor, but her early years at Bryn Mawr were dogged by tragedy. That year, her father died,

followed by the death of her husband three months later in 1921. Her professional accomplishments, however, did not go unrecognized. In 1921, she was starred in American Men of Science, which listed the most prominent American scientists of the day.

In 1925, Wheeler remarried. A widower since 1915, Arthur Leslie Wheeler was a well-known classicist who had taught at Bryn Mawr for several years. Just before their marriage, he accepted a position as professor of Latin at Princeton University. The couple moved to Princeton.

In 1923, Wheeler was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the American Mathematical Society. The next year, she was elected to the Council. She served on a three-person committee which selected the first recipient of the Chauvenet Prize in 1926. In 1927, Wheeler was invited to deliver the Colloquium Lectures at the American Mathematical Society, an annual series of three or four lectures delivered by a respected mathematician. She was the first and only woman to be so honored until 1980, when Julia B. Robinson delivered the lectures. In 1927, Wheeler also became editor of Annals of Mathematics, a distinguished journal.

Wheeler continued to lecture at Bryn Mawr on a part-time basis. The reduced teaching load allowed her to pursue her research interest, and to became more involved with mathematics at Princeton University. In 1926, she had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

The Wheelers built a summer retreat in the Adirondacks, naming their hideaway Q.E.D. in reference to their mutual interests. There, Wheeler indulged her passion for wildflowers and bird watching. Unfortunately her husband died suddenly in 1932 of apoplexy. Thus, Wheeler returned to Bryn Mawr and resumed teaching full time. In 1939, she was one of a group of scholars who successfully petitioned for an American analog to the German journal Zentralblatt für Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete.

Wheeler's research centered on linear algebra of infinite variations. Her work was part of what has come to be known as functional analysis. Her interest sprang from the potential of various applications to differential and integral equations. Wheeler's mathematical training coincided with a period during which functional analysis was emerging as a field in its own right. Thus her research focused primarily on analysis, though she did investigate some purely algebraic problems. Of particular note was her work on biorthogonal systems of function, and their analytical uses in integral equations.

With the exception of brief absences, Wheeler remained chair of the Bryn Mawr mathematics department until her retirement in 1948. During those years, she supervised seven Ph.D. students and worked diligently to enhance the college's reputation. During the Great Depression, she tried to cultivate an atmosphere of intellectual inquiry and career opportunity despite the severe financial constraints placed upon the institution. Recognizing the important role which research played in the fostering of teaching excellence, she advocated reduced teaching loads during a period of fiscal restraint. Wheeler was aware of the difficulties faced by women in the profession, and urged her students to participate in the professional forums, and to do so on an equal basis with male colleagues. As one colleague subsequently wrote her:

I shall always look back on those years with deep gratitude that the opportunity was given me to share them with you. You never wavered. The shrine of mathematics didn't need any apologies. There was no compromising. There was work to be done and you kept the path free from pitfalls and blind alleys. You know,—when it comes right down to it,—you have not only been a mathematician and mathematics teacher,—you have been a sort of Institute for Advanced Study.

During her tenure as chair of the mathematics department, Wheeler was instrumental in securing a position at Bryn Mawr for the prominent German mathematician Emmy Noether who had been driven out of Germany because of her Jewish ancestry. Wheeler also sought to organize an exchange program between Bryn Mawr and the University of Pennsylvania, in which Noether was to be intimately involved. At the time of Noether's sudden death in 1935, Wheeler was attempting to fund a tenured position for Noether at Bryn Mawr. As a personal friend, Wheeler was deeply shocked by Noether's untimely death, as was the entire Bryn Mawr community.

Wheeler received an honorary degree from the New Jersey College for Women in 1932, and in 1937 she was also honored in the same fashion with a degree from Mt. Holyoke College. She was acclaimed by the Women's Centennial Congress in 1940, as one of 100 women who had flourished in careers traditionally closed to women. Wheeler was also praised for her devotion to her students. She was generous with her time, expertise, and finances. Poor students often received copies of books which Wheeler claimed she no longer used. Her home in the Adirondacks was open to graduate students seeking encouragement and a quiet place to work. She inspired her students with her passion for mathematics, and her willingness to discuss theoretical problems.

When Wheeler retired from Bryn Mawr in 1948, her former students and colleagues held a testimonial dinner for her. In retirement, Wheeler did not withdraw from mathematics. Despite severe arthritis, she continued to attend conferences and seminars. In 1964, a seminar series was created in her honor at Bryn Mawr.

Anna Pell Wheeler suffered a stroke and died on March 26, 1966, at age 82. She was buried alongside Alexander Pell in the Lower Merion Baptist Church Cemetery at Bryn Mawr. Wheeler's research was always well received, and respected. Her determination to pursue a career in the male-dominated field of mathematics speaks volumes of her force of character and courage. Her teaching, particularly at Bryn Mawr, inspired a generation of women to pursue careers in mathematics, and to do so with vigor and a pioneering spirit which attempted to negate the male prejudices of the mathematics profession in the United States.

sources:

Green, Judy, and Jeanne LaDuke. "Contributors to American Mathematics: An Overview and Selection," in Women of Science. G. Kass-Simon and Patricia Farnes, eds. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990.

Grinstein, Louise S. "Wheeler, Anna Johnson Pell," in Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Barbara Sicherman and Carol Hurd Green, eds. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1980.

——, and Paul J. Campbell. "Anna Johnson Pell Wheeler: Her Life and Work," in Historia Mathematica. NY: Academic Press, 1982, vol. 9, pp. 37–53.

Iyanga, S., and Y. Kawada, eds. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Mathematics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977.