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