Evelyn Boyd Granville

Evelyn Boyd Granville née Evelyn Boyd (1924 - ) American mathematician and educator, the first African American woman to earn a doctorate degree in mathematics in the United States, co-author with Jason Frand of Theory and Application of Mathematics for Teachers.

As a teenager, Granville attended the blacks-only Paul Dunbar High School in Washington, D. C. She obtained a scholarship to Smith College but it was only with her family’s financial help that she was able to graduate. At first Granville considered majoring in astronomy, but opted for mathematics instead with Neal McCoy and Susan Rambo as her primary instructors Graduating summa cum laude, Granville received more substantial scholarships to continue graduate studies at Yale, where she earned master’s degrees in physics and mathematics.

Despite all the awards and fellowships she accumulated, at the time she couldn’t get work teaching in the best-known universities because of her race. The then blacks-only Fisk University gave her a position, though. The military and the computer industry had no problem with her race, and she worked for the U. S. Army and IBM.

After a failed marriage to a preacher in the 1960s, Evelyn married the real estate broker Edward Granville and began teaching at the California State University. When the couple moved to Texas, she taught at Texas College and even tried her hand at teaching elementary school.