Helen Abbot Merrill
Helen Abbot Merrill was an American mathematician, educator and textbook author. She was chair of the mathematics department at Wellesley College, where she taught from 1893 to 1932.
Early life and education
Merrill was born on March 30, 1864, in Llewellyn Park, New Jersey. Her father George Merrill was a New Jersey insurance claims adjustor; her mother was Emily Dodge Abbot Merrill. She lived in Newburyport, Massachusetts, for some of her childhood. She entered Wellesley College in 1882; she intended to major in Greek and Latin, but switched to mathematics after one year, and graduated in 1886. She pursued further studies at the University of Chicago and in Germany. In 1903 she earned a PhD in mathematics at Yale University under the direction of James Pierpont. Her thesis was "On Solutions of Differential Equations which possess an Oscillation Theorem."Her younger brother William P. Merrill was a noted Presbyterian minister, hymn writer, and pacifist.
Career
Merrill taught at girls' schools in New York and Pennsylvania after college. She taught mathematics at Wellesley College beginning in 1893, and she was chair of the mathematics department from 1916 to 1932. She rebuilt Wellesley's collection of cardboard mathematical models, after a fire destroyed the original set. Upon her retirement in 1932 from Wellesley, she was given the title professor emerita.She became a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1911. In 1920 she was appointed vice-president of the Mathematical Association of America.