Dorothy Walcott Weeks
Dorothy Walcott Weeks (May 3, 1893 – June 4, 1990) was an American mathematician and physicist. Weeks was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She earned degrees from Wellesley College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Simmons College.[1] Weeks was the first woman to receive a PhD in Mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[2][3]
Dorothy Walcott Weeks | |
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 Left to right, upper: Dorothy Walcott Weeks, David Morse, lower: Bronisław Knaster, Kazimierz Kuratowski, at the International Mathematical Congress, Zürich 1932 | |
| Born | May 3, 1893 Philadelphia, PA |
| Died | June 4, 1990 (aged 97) Newton, MA |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater |
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| Awards |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | A study of the interference of polarized light by the method of coherency matrices (1930) |
| Doctoral advisor | Norbert Wiener |
Life and work
After graduation from Wellesley College in 1916, Weeks went on to work as a teacher and a statistical clerk before becoming the third woman to work as a patent examiner at the US Patent Office in 1917.[1]
In 1924 she obtained a second master's degree, from the Prince School of Business at Simmons College, and became an employment supervisor for Jordan Marsh, the Boston department store. But by 1928, she had returned to academia, teaching physics at Wellesley College while working on her doctorate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[4]
In 1930, Weeks completed a PhD in theoretical physics from the mathematics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her dissertation work was guided by Norbert Wiener.[1][3] Following completion of graduate studies, Weeks developed and led the physics department at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania from 1930-1956.
Weeks left Wilson on sabbatical from 1943 to 1945, when she worked as a technical aide at the Office of Scientific Research and Development.[4] Later, between 1949–50, Weeks was a Guggenheim fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1]
From 1956-1964, Weeks was a physicist at the Watertown Arsenal and the technical representative for the Committee on Radioactive Shielding. In 1964, she worked for the NASA supported Solar Satellite Project at the Harvard College Observatory.[1] She would continue to work as at Harvard as a spectroscopist, studying solar satellites at the Harvard College Observatory until she retired in 1976 at the age of eighty-three.[4]
References
- Green, Judy; LaDuke, Jeanne (2009). Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's. American Mathematical Society. pp. 308–09. Biography on p.621-626 of the Supplementary Material at AMS
- Dorothy W. Weeks papers MC 400, MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections Finding Aids
- Alumnae Achievement Awards 1983, Wellseley College, retrieved 22 December 2014
- "Dorothy Weeks, 97, A Physicist Who Led In Variety of Careers". New York Times. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
