Day 17 Black History Month 2021 - Dr. Evelyn Boyd Granville

Dr. Evelyn Boyd Granville (May 1924 – Present)

For Day 17 of Black History month, we’d like to highlight Dr. Evelyn Boyd Granville, an American computer scientist, mathematician and educator who was the second African American woman to graduate with a PhD in Mathematics from an American university (Yale). 

After college she worked as a research assistant and taught mathematics at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. She relocated back to Washington D.C. and worked for the National Bureau of Standards, using math in the research and development of fuses for missiles.

She then went on to work for IBM, who was a contractor to NASA, where she developed computer software that helped to analyze satellite orbits for the Mercury missions. She also worked on NASA’s Apollo program as a contractor North American Aviation.

While she had an amazing career working with IBM and on several NASA programs, she went on to teach computer programming and mathematics at California State University, Los Angeles, Texas College and the University of Texas at Tyler.

Throughout her career she has been advocating for the importance of STEM and women in STEM.

“I always smile when I hear that women cannot excel in mathematics.” - Dr. Evelyn Boyd Granville