Euphemia Lofton Haynes
Mathematician
(September 11, 1890 – July 25, 1980)
The first African American woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics from The Catholic University of America.
Euphemia Lofton Haynes was born on Sept. 11, 1890, in Washington, D.C. Lofton graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in 1914. She received a master’s degree in education from the University of Chicago in 1930, and that same year she founded the mathematics department at Miner Teachers College (later the University of the District of Columbia), an institution in Washington dedicated to training African American teachers. In 1943 Haynes became the first African American woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics from The Catholic University of America. She retired from teaching in 1959. Haynes died of a heart attack on July 25, 1980, in her hometown, Washington, D.C. After her death in 1980, The Catholic University of America used a bequest of $700,000 from her estate to endow a chair and establish a student loan fund in the education department.
Pope John XXIII awarded her the Papal Decoration of Honor, Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, in 1959. She was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1998.
In 2004, the E.L. Haynes Public Charter School in Washington, DC was named in her honor. The Catholic University of America established the Euphemia Lofton Haynes Award to recognize outstanding junior mathematics majors who have demonstrated excellence and promise in their study of mathematics
Publishings
Euphemia Lofton Haynes. The Historical Development of Tests in Elementary and Secondary Mathematics. University of Chicago, Department of Education (1930).
Euphemia Lofton Haynes. Determination of Sets of Independent Conditions Characterizing Certain Special Cases of Symmetric Correspondences. Catholic University of America Press (1943).