Ellen Burrell

  1. Home
  2. Wiki
Ellen Burrell
A white woman wearing pince-nez glasses and a high-collared dress with pleated front; her hair is dressed back from her face and up at the nape
Ellen Burrell, from the 1915 yearbook of Wellesley College
Born
Ellen Louisa Burrell

(1850-06-12)June 12, 1850
Lockport, New York
DiedDecember 3, 1938(1938-12-03) (aged 88)
Roxbury, Massachusetts
OccupationMathematics professor

Ellen Louisa Burrell (June 12, 1850 – December 3, 1938) was an American mathematics professor, head of the Department of Pure Mathematics at Wellesley College from 1897 to 1916.

Early life

[edit]

Burrell was born in Lockport, New York, the daughter of Myron Louis Burrell and Mary Jones Burrell. She earned a bachelor's degree from Wellesley College in 1880, in the same class as her future colleagues Katharine Lee Bates and Charlotte Fitch Roberts.[1] She went to Germany for further studies at Göttingen in 1896 and 1897.[2]

Career

[edit]

Burrell taught at Rockford Seminary in Illinois for several years, from 1881 to 1886. She returned to Wellesley to teach in 1886.[3] In 1897, as a solution to her contentious relationship with fellow mathematics professor Ellen Hayes, she was made head of the Department of Pure Mathematics (and Hayes became head of Applied Mathematics).[4] Her department included professors Roxana Vivian and Helen Abbott Merrill.[5] She and Hayes both retired from Wellesley in 1916, and the departments were reunited.[6] She was also curator of the college's herbarium.[2] Her class notes were privately published as "The Number System" and "Synthetic Projection Geometry".[4]

Burrell attended the fourth colloquium of the American Mathematical Society in Boston in 1903,[7] and another 1903 meeting of the society held at Columbia University.[8] She was also active in the Association of Mathematics Teachers of New England.[9] She visited the American School for Girls in Constantinople in 1907.[10]

Personal life

[edit]

Burrell enthusiastically voted for Warren G. Harding for president in 1920.[11] She died in 1938, aged 88 years, in Roxbury, Massachusetts.[2] Her papers are in the Wellesley College Archives.[4]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Cohen, Arlene (2006-05-31). Wellesley College. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4396-3379-3.
  2. ^ a b c "Miss Ellen Burrell, Long an Educator; Ex-Head of Wellesley College Mathematics Faculty Dies". The New York Times. 1938-12-05. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-10-10.
  3. ^ Palmieri, Patricia A. (1983). "Here Was Fellowship: A Social Portrait of Academic Women at Wellesley College, 1895-1920". History of Education Quarterly. 23 (2): 195–214. doi:10.2307/368159. ISSN 0018-2680. JSTOR 368159. S2CID 144139874.
  4. ^ a b c Palmieri, Patricia Ann (1997-02-27). In Adamless Eden: The Community of Women Faculty at Wellesley. Yale University Press. pp. 128–129, 326, n. 67. ISBN 978-0-300-06388-2.
  5. ^ Wellesley College, Legenda (1915 yearbook): 34.
  6. ^ Green, Judy; LaDuke, Jeanne (2009). Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's. American Mathematical Soc. p. 23. ISBN 978-0-8218-4376-5.
  7. ^ Cole, F. N. (December 1903). "The Boston Colloquium of the American Mathematical Society" (PDF). Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 10 (3): 119–120. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1903-01074-X.
  8. ^ Cole, F. N. (1903-03-20). "American Mathematical Society". Science. 17 (429): 468. doi:10.1126/science.17.429.468-a. ISSN 0036-8075.
  9. ^ Francis, William A. (February 1907). "Association of Mathematics Teachers of New England". School Science and Mathematics. 7: 153.
  10. ^ "The American College". Boston Evening Transcript. 1907-10-17. p. 14. Retrieved 2021-10-10 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ^ "Alumnae Notes". The Wellesley Alumnae Quarterly. Wellesley College Alumnae Association. January 1921. p. 125.
[edit]