Penn’s pioneering mathematicians | Science & Technology - Penn: Office of University Communications

Two of the first African Americans to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, Dudley Weldon Woodard and William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor worked on fundamental problems in the field of topology and supported graduate-level math education for minority students, explains Erica K. Brockmeier, Science News Officer at University of Pennsylvania.

Dudley Weldon Woodard (left) and William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor, who earned their Ph.D.s in mathematics in 1928 and 1933, respectively. 

Penn has been the home of a number of notable African Americans, including civil rights activist W.E.B Du Bois, but only more recently have the stories of its pioneering mathematicians come to light. As two of the first African Americans to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, Dudley Weldon Woodard and William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor were both talented researchers as well as devoted supporters of math education for minority students. Continuing to celebrate Black History Month, Penn Today explores the lives of these two pioneers and what their legacy looks like today.

Dudley Weldon Woodard Woodard was born in Galveston, Texas, in 1881. While there is little information about his childhood, segregation and a “separate but equal” doctrine likely made it difficult for any African Americans who sought higher education. Regardless of any challenges he faced, Woodard earned a bachelor’s degree in math from Wilberforce University, in Ohio, in 1903 and a master’s in math from the University of Chicago in 1907.

After teaching at Tuskegee University and Wilberforce, Woodard joined the faculty at Howard University in 1920. Around that time, he began taking advanced math courses at Colombia University under the mentorship of Elbert Frank Cox, the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. Woodard was quickly recognized as having a talent in mathematical research and took a leave from Howard in 1927 to enroll as a Ph.D. student at Penn. He worked under John R. Kline on Jordan curves, the topic of a well-known theorem in topology...

William Waldron Schieffelin Claytor One of Woodard’s most promising students was Claytor, who was born in 1908 and raised in Virginia. After earning a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Howard in 1929, Claytor became the first student to enroll in the newly established mathematics graduate program. Woodard recommended Claytor to the Ph.D. program at Penn, where he was accepted and enrolled in 1930 to work on his thesis under Kline.

Claytor quickly gained a reputation as a brilliant student, earning the most prestigious award offered at Penn at that time, a Harrison Fellowship, in his final year of studies. Of Claytor’s Ph.D. thesis, Kline told his advisor Robert L. Moore that “Claytor wrote a very fine thesis. In many ways I think that it is perhaps the best that I have ever had done under my direction.”...

A mathematical legacy 
This month, the Math/Physics/Astronomy Library curated a display of works authored by African American mathematicians, physicists, and astronomers. Along with Woodard and Claytor’s theses are the work of George Hench Butcher Jr., who earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Penn in 1951; an almanac by Benjamin Banneker, who is known for tracking the spread of yellow fever across Philadelphia; and modern publications such as John Urschel’s autobiography about his interests in both math and football. 
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Source: Penn: Office of University Communications