- AMERICAN WOMEN 103
(1864-1943, a student of Max Noether at Erlangen) and Maximc Bocher (1867-
1918, a student of Felix Klein). Even though she was not a student at Wellesley,
she was awarded a Wellesley fellowship for study abroad and went to Gottingen to
attend lectures by Klein and Hubert. Her recently widowed former professor at the
University of South Dakota, Alexander Pell (1857-1921), had been corresponding
with her for some time. In 1907 he came to Gottingen, and they were married. She
returned with him to the United States but then went back to Gottingen to finish
her doctorate. For reasons that are not clear, she did the work but did not receive
the degree. Her family thought she had been pressured by her husband, who was
suffering from the separation, to return to him. The only explanation she gave to
the dean at Radcliffe for returning without the degree was that "in Gottingen I had
some trouble with Professor Hubert and came back to America without a degree"
(Grinstein and Campbell, 1982, p. 41). She emphasized that she had written her
thesis without any help from Hubert, and so was able to submit it to the University
of Chicago, where, under the supervision of another early American mathematician
of distinction, Eliakim Hastings Moore (1862-1932), she was awarded the degree
magna cum laude in 1909.
Once again, a woman had obtained a Ph. D. in mathematics at the age of only
- Her adviser Moore sought positions for her at many universities near Chicago,
where her husband was a professor at the Armour Institute of Technology. But
that third-stage hurdle that has been mentioned several times before once again
proved nearly insurmountable. As she wrote,
I had hoped for a position in one of the good univ. like Wise, 111.
etc., but there is such an objection to women that they prefer a
man even if he is inferior both in training and research. It seems
that Professor Moore has also given up hope for he has inquired at
some of the Eastern Girls' Colleges and Bryn Mawr is apparently
the only one with a vacancy in Math. [Grinstein and Campbell,
1982, p. 42]As it happened, she did not go to Bryn Mawr immediately. Her husband had
a stroke that year, and she took over his teaching duties at the Armour Institute of
Technology while also lecturing at the University of Chicago. She proved extremely
competent at both duties. Then, from 1911 to 1918 she taught at Mount Holyoke
College in Massachusetts before moving on to Bryn Mawr. When Charlotte Angas
Scott retired in 1924, Anna Pell became head of the mathematics department at
Bryn Mawr. Four years after the death of Alexander Pell in 1921, she married
another widower, Arthur Leslie Wheeler (1871-1932, a distinguished classics scholar
whose books are still being reprinted 70 years after his death). Since Wheeler had
just been appointed at Princeton at the time, Anna taught only part-time at Bryn
Mawr for a few years. But when he died in 1932, she went back to full-time work at
Bryn Mawr and presided over the invitation to Emmy Noether that brought that
distinguished mathematician there. Her own work in linear algebra allowed her to
supervise the theses of many students, and was so distinguished that in 1927 she
was the first woman to be invited to give a Colloquium Lecture to the American
Mathematical Society.^21 She remained at Bryn Mawr until her retirement in 1948,
then continued to live in the area until her death in 1966.The second woman was Julia Bowman Robinson- in 1980!