This summer, I worked with Professor Ben Morin on a project titled “What Does a Vassar Mathematician Look Like?” The goal of this project was examine the history of Vassar’s Mathematics Department and find notable people who have passed through it. Specifically, we wanted to find alumnae/i who belonged to minority groups in order to show that Vassar mathematicians are a diverse group. The work done this summer was the beginning of a much longer project.

In my research, I found many people who stood out. The diversity of the early years of Vassar unfortunately only concerns sex; we did not see the first math majors of color until well into the twentieth century. Many women who passed through the department as students before World War II went on to do things that we atypical for the time: seven went on to receive PhDs in mathematics, and we know of at least one woman from the class of 1911 who became a doctor. Additionally, the faculty of Vassar’s math department had an atypical makeup for most of its history. For a large portion of the twentieth century, the faculty was comprised entirely of women. Our first faculty member of color was Gloria Castellanos, a Cuban refugee; she was also the first applied mathematician in the department. Clearly, the early women of Vassar were not afraid to push the envelope.

Our findings this summer focused on the first half of the twentieth century. In addition to researching specific students and faculty members, we found out more about the culture of Vassar’s Mathematics Department and Vassar College itself. Future work will continue to examine notable alumnae/i and faculty members, and we hope to showcase the diversity in the Mathematics Department.