Grace Bates

Grace Elizabeth Bates (13 August 1914 – 19 November 1996) was an American mathematician and one of few women in the United States to be granted a Ph.D. in mathematics in the 1940s. She became an emeritus professor at Mount Holyoke College. As well as teaching, she wrote papers on algebra and probability theory and two books: The Real Number System and Modern Algebra, Second Course. Throughout her own education, Dr. Bates overcame obstructions to her pursuit of knowledge, opening the way for future women learners.

She was born on 13 August 1914. Interested in mathematics from a very young age, Grace was encouraged to pursue her interest by incorporating it into her play activities often playing math games on her grandfather's knee. Grace maintained a close relationship with her brother, reinforced by the early death of their mother. Upon completing high school, her brother used his salary to help her continue her education through high school and college.

Bates experienced obstacles in her pursuit of education. She attended the Cazenovia Seminary for high school and described the experience of being denied the right to pursue the studies of her choosing:

"I pulled the strings to—I was taking the usual elementary algebra and then geometry, and I wanted to go on in my senior year with intermediate algebra, and they said there that I’d have to take a history course. And I squawked and I wrote my dad, and he got the commissioner [of education] to write and say that [if] some young person what was really interested in mathematics, [then] they could take history...another year, but don’t try to deter [them from taking mathematics]. So I got to take mathematics!"

These same obstructions continued with her through college. For her bachelor's degree, she attended Middlebury College, which was segregated by sex. Again, she had to petition to be allowed to take higher level math courses. Her request was granted and she became the only woman enrolled to study differential equations in her senior year. After graduating from Middlebury College in 1935, she chose to continue her schooling, receiving her master's degree from Brown University in 1938.

Having aspired to be a teacher most of her life, Grace Bates began teaching mathematics and English to elementary and secondary school children. The idea of teaching at the collegial level drew her back to continue her education. While pursuing her doctorate, Dr. Bates discovered her love for research. For her dissertation, Dr. Bates worked with Reinhold Baer and rose to his frequent challenges. In her words,

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