William Thomas Fletcher is an American mathematician.
He received the B.S.(magna cum laude) and M.S. degrees (major in mathematics) from North Carolina Central University (NCCU), Durham, NC in 1956 and 1958 respectively. He received the Ph.D. degree in mathematics from the University of Idaho in 1966.
In 1957 Dr. Fletcher accepted his first teaching position in the department of mathematics at LeMoyne-Owen College, Memphis, Tennessee, 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).
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, 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 at NCCU.
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, [1] 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.
North Carolina Central University 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 both Northern and Southern philanthropists. It was made part of the state system in 1923, when it first received state funding and was renamed as Durham State Normal School. It added graduate classes in arts and sciences and professional schools in law and library science in the late 1930s and 1940s.
The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) is a two-year, public residential high school with two physical campuses located in Durham, North Carolina and Morganton, North Carolina that focuses on the intensive study of science, mathematics and technology. It accepts rising juniors from across North Carolina and enrolls them through senior year. Although NCSSM is a public school, enrollment is extremely selective, and applicants undergo a competitive review process for admission. NCSSM is a founding member of the National Consortium of Secondary Stem Schools (NCSSS) and a constituent institution of the University of North Carolina system. While not officially branded as such, many residents of North Carolina consider NCSSM to be a counterpart to the University of North Carolina School of the Arts due to their shared status as specialty residential high schools, with NCSSM focusing on science and math and the School of the Arts offering extended study in the arts.
Henry McKinley "Mickey" Michaux Jr. is an American civil rights activist and Democratic member of the North Carolina General Assembly. He represented the state's thirty-first House district from 1983 to 2019 and previously served from 1973 through 1977. The district included constituents in Durham County. Upon his retirement, Michaux was the longest-serving member of the North Carolina General Assembly. In the 2007-2008 session, Michaux served as senior chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and chairman of the House Select Committee on Street Gang Prevention.
Jack Joseph Dongarra is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is the American University Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee. He holds the position of a Distinguished Research Staff member in the Computer Science and Mathematics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Turing Fellowship in the School of Mathematics at the University of Manchester, and is an adjunct professor and teacher in the Computer Science Department at Rice University. He served as a faculty fellow at the Texas A&M University Institute for Advanced Study (2014–2018). Dongarra is the founding director of the Innovative Computing Laboratory at the University of Tennessee. He was the recipient of the Turing Award in 2021.
David Orlin Hestenes is a theoretical physicist and science educator. He is best known as chief architect of geometric algebra as a unified language for mathematics and physics, and as founder of Modelling Instruction, a research-based program to reform K–12 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education.
Albert William Tucker was a Canadian mathematician who made important contributions in topology, game theory, and non-linear programming.
Efim Isaakovich Zelmanov is a Russian-American mathematician, known for his work on combinatorial problems in nonassociative algebra and group theory, including his solution of the restricted Burnside problem. He was awarded a Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich in 1994.
Gertrude Mary Cox was an American statistician and founder of the department of Experimental Statistics at North Carolina State University. She was later appointed director of both the Institute of Statistics of the Consolidated University of North Carolina and the Statistics Research Division of North Carolina State University. Her most important and influential research dealt with experimental design; In 1950 she published the book Experimental Designs, on the subject with W. G. Cochran, which became the major reference work on the design of experiments for statisticians for years afterwards. In 1949 Cox became the first woman elected into the International Statistical Institute and in 1956 was President of the American Statistical Association.
Marjorie Lee Browne was a mathematics educator. She was one of the first African-American women to receive a PhD in mathematics.
James Edward Shepard was an American pharmacist, civil servant and educator, the founder of what became the North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina. He first established it as a private school for religious training in 1910 but adapted it as a school for teachers. He had a network of private supporters, including northern white philanthropists such as Olivia Slocum Sage of New York.
Alethia Annette Lewis Hoage Phinazee was the first woman and the first black American woman to earn the doctorate in library science from Columbia University. She was called a trailblazer for her work as a librarian and educator.
Lee Vernon Stiff was an American mathematics education researcher; a professor in the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education and the Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs in the College of Education at North Carolina State University (NCSU); and the author of several mathematics textbooks. In his 72 years of living he wrote many books.
The North Carolina Central University School of Law is the law school associated with North Carolina Central University. The school is fully accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA) and the North Carolina State Bar Council, and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). According to NC Central's official 2018 ABA-required disclosures, 37.9% of the Class of 2018 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation.
Robert Creighton Buck, usually cited as R. Creighton Buck, was an American mathematician who, with Ralph Boas, introduced Boas–Buck polynomials. He taught at University of Wisconsin–Madison for 40 years. In addition, he was a writer.
Gloria Conyers Hewitt is an American mathematician. She was the fourth African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics. Her main research interests were in group theory and abstract algebra. She is the first African American woman to chair a math department in the United States.
Doris J. Schattschneider is an American mathematician, a retired professor of mathematics at Moravian College. She is known for writing about tessellations and about the art of M. C. Escher, for helping Martin Gardner validate and popularize the pentagon tiling discoveries of amateur mathematician Marjorie Rice, and for co-directing with Eugene Klotz the project that developed The Geometer's Sketchpad.
Geraldine Claudette Darden is an American mathematician. She was the fourteenth African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics.
Edray Herber Goins is an American mathematician. He specializes in number theory and algebraic geometry. His interests include Selmer groups for elliptic curves using class groups of number fields, Belyi maps and Dessin d'enfants.
Virginia Kimbrough Newell is an American mathematics educator, author, politician, and centenarian.