The History of Mathematics: A Brief Course

5. NORTH AMERICA 65

[H]e began and finished [this almanac] without the least information

or assistance from any person, or other books than those I have men-

tioned; so that whatever merit is attached to his present performance

is exclusively and peculiarly his own.

Banneker's Almanac was published and sold all over the United States in the

decade from 1792 until 1802. The contents of the Almanac are comparable with

those of other almanacs that have been published in the United States: On alternate

pages one finds calendars for each week or month, giving the phases of the Moon,

the locations of the planets and bright stars visible during the period in question,

and the times of sunrise, high and low tides, and conjunctions and oppositions

of planets. Recognition came late to Banneker. The money he earned from his

Almanac gave him some leisure in his old age, and his name was praised by Pitt in

Parliament and by Condorcet before the French Academy of Sciences.

African-American mathematicians. Although the antislavery movement had begun

in Banneker's time, African Americans were to endure two more generations of

slavery followed by three generations of institutionalized, legalized discrimination

and disenfranchisement before the civil rights movement gained sufficient strength

to open to them the opportunities that a white American of very modest means

could expect. It is therefore no wonder that very few African Americans became

noted scholars. Nevertheless, the scientific creativity of African Americans has been

a significant factor in the economic life of the United States, as can be seen, for

example, in the book of James (1989). The first African American to obtain a

doctorate in mathematics was Elbert Cox (1895-1969), who became a professor at

Howard University after obtaining the doctorate at Cornell in 1925, one of only

28 doctorates awarded to Americans (of any color) that year. The first African-

American women to receive the doctorate in mathematics, both of them in 1949,

were Marjorie Lee Brown (1914-1979) and Evelyn Boyd Granville (b. 1924). Brown

was a differential topologist who received her degree at the University of Michigan

and taught at North Carolina Central University. Granville received the Ph.D.

from Yale University and worked in the space program during the 1960s. She later

taught at California State University in Los Angeles.

The number of African Americans choosing to enter mathematics and science

is still comparatively small. In fact, the author of an article entitled "Black Women

Ph.D.'s in Mathematics" in the 1980s was able to interview all of the people de-

scribed in the title who were still alive. A career in research, after all, requires a long

apprenticeship, during which financial support must be provided either by family,

by extra work, or by grants and loans. For people who do not come from wealthy

families, other careers, promising earlier financial rewards, are likely to seem more

attractive. Undoubtedly, if the average income of African Americans were higher,

more of them would choose scientific careers. Lest these comments seem unduly

pessimistic, it should be noted that a conference devoted to the research of African

Americans in 1996 brought together 79 African-American mathematicians (Dean,

1996).

Nathaniel Bowditch. Benjamin Banneker was about 40 years old and living in ob-

scurity near Baltimore when Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838) was born in Salem,

Massachusetts. His ancestors had been shipbuilders but had accumulated no sub-

stantial amount of money by this trade. His father abandoned it and became a