Mary Frances Winston Newton

 

Mary Frances was the first American lady to receive a Ph.D in mathematics from a European university. She was born in Foreseen, Illinois, one of seven children of Thomas Winston a country doctor, and his wife Caroline. When she was 15 she enroll at the University of Wisconsin. Winston graduated from Wisconsin in1889 with a degree with honors in Mathematicis. She became a teacher at Bryan Marw College and stayed for one year. Mary Winston returned to the United States to become the head of the mathematics department at Kansas State College in Manhattan, Kansas. Mary taught there until giving up the position in 1900 to marry Henry Bryon Newson, a professor of mathematics at the University of Kansas. They had three between 1901 and 1909. Her husband in 1909 died of a heart attack leaving his wife with no job and three children.

 

1998, by Daneisha, fourth grade

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