Adelaide Smith

Adelaide Smith (born 1870 in Boone, Iowa) was an American mathematician who studied with David Hilbert at the University of Göttingen, traveled to South Africa to teach at the only women's college south of the equator, and wrote two books about her experiences there. Her appointment as a mathematics instructor at the University of California, Berkeley was reported nationally. In later life she became the principal of a school for girls, the second oldest in California.

This article is about the American mathematician. For the Sierra Leone activist, see Adelaide Casely-Hayford. For the fictional character in the 1960s Broadway play Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright, see Diana Sands.

Early life and education

Smith was born in 1870 in Boone, Iowa, the daughter of Allan Smith and his wife, Adelaide Nancy Butler.[1][2] Her family moved to Chicago,[3] and she studied at the Kirkland School in Chicago.[2] As well as for her scholarship, she was also known as a talented piano player.[3] After graduating from Wellesley College in 1893,[2][4][5] where she completed the five-year course in music in only four years,[6] she returned to Boone to become a high school teacher.[3][5]

After a year in Boone, Smith spent the following summer studying mathematics at the University of Chicago. In 1894 she became a science teacher at the National Park Seminary in Maryland, while continuing to study mathematics through the Columbian University, now part of George Washington University.[7] In 1897, Smith took a position as the chair for modern languages at Alma College in Michigan.[8] By 1899, she was listed as "acting professor of mathematics" at the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.[9]

International travel

In 1899, funded by the Women's Education Association[10] and an Association of Collegiate Alumnae European Fellowship,[2] Smith traveled to the University of Göttingen for advanced study in mathematics.[11] She stayed in Göttingen for ​2 1⁄2 years, and then moved to South Africa to teach at Huguenot College, at that time "the only institution for women south of the equator".[12] While "teaching advanced mathematics" at Huguenot College,[10] she earned a second bachelor's degree in 1905 at the University of the Cape of Good Hope.[4][13]

She wrote about her travels in two books with a fellow American traveler, Jennie R. White: South Africa Today (1907) and A Little Journey to South Africa and Up the East Coast (1908), both published by the A. Flanagan Co.[2][14][15][16]

Later life in California

Returning to the US, Smith taught at San Rafael High School in California in 1908.[17] She was named an instructor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1909,[3] an event that was reported nationally.[18] She performed as a piano accompanist in a concert of opera music by Richard Wagner at the Hearst Greek Theatre in 1910,[19] and completed a master's degree at the university in 1911.[4][13] Her master's thesis concerned a differential equation suggested to her by David Hilbert during her stay in Göttingen.[20] She also became a professor of mathematics at Mills College.[21]

In 1913, she became head of the Snell Seminary in Berkeley after the death of its previous head, Edna Snell Poulson,[21] renaming it as the Wellesley School for Girls.[22] In an incident from this time recorded by Bruce Kodish, she sold her copy of Principia Mathematica to Alfred Korzybski, having "little use" for it herself.[23] In 1934, she was described as "bedridden" from a broken hip but as a "well-known Berkeley educator" giving college preparatory lessons to the unemployed through the Civil Works Service,[24] and she continued to be listed as the principal of the Wellesley School, "the second oldest private school in the state", as late as 1950.[25]

References
  1. "Miss Adelaide Smith", Lineage Book - National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, 26, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1898, p. 206
  2. Leonard, John William (1914), "Smith, Adelaide", Woman's who's who of America: A biographical dictionary of contemporary women of the United States and Canada, The American Commonwealth Company, pp. 753–754
  3. "Personal and educational", The Teacher's Journal: 170–171, 1909
  4. Singer, Sandra L. (2003), Adventures Abroad: North American Women at German-speaking Universities, 1868–1915, Contributions in women's studies, 201, Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 92, ISBN 9780313323713
  5. "Alumnae Notes", The Wellesley Magazine, p. 53, October 14, 1893
  6. "Tree-day", Wellesley Magazine, p. 457, June 1893
  7. "Alumnae Notes", Wellesley Magazine, vol. 3 no. 3, pp. 172–173, December 1894
  8. "Alumnae Notes", The Wellesley Magazine, vol. 7 no. 1, p. 39, October 1897
  9. "Faculty and Assistants", The Grist (Yearbook), 3, Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, 1899
  10. "Fellows of the Women's Education Association", AAUW Journal: 14, 1905
  11. San Francisco Call (1913); Singer (2003)
  12. San Francisco Call (1913). Singer (2003) gives a different chronology in which after earning all of her degrees, she taught at Rhode Island State College before returning to South Africa to teach at Huguenot College, but this is inconsistent with the historical references. See also a brief mention of her teaching at Huguenot College in Duff, S. E. (May 2006), "From New Women to College Girls at the Huguenot Seminary and College, 1895–1910", Historia, 51 (1): 1–27
  13. "Regents of University of California Confer Degrees", San Francisco Call, 109 (168), May 17, 1911 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection. Lists Smith as having bachelor's degrees from both Wellesley in 1893 and the University of the Cape of Good Hope in 1905.
  14. "Review of South Africa Today", The Journal of Education, 65 (16): 440, April 18, 1907, JSTOR 42810195; "Review of A Little Journey to South Africa", The Journal of Education, 69 (18): 502, May 6, 1909, JSTOR 42917506
  15. "Write a book", Sacramento Union, 113 (76), May 9, 1907 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection
  16. White, J. R.; Smith, Abigail (1908), A Little Journey to South Africa and Up the East Coast, A. Flanagan Company – via Internet Archive
  17. "Teachers' Institute Very Interesting", Sausalito News, 24 (15), April 11, 1908 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection
  18. "Berkeley calls a woman: Miss Smith Chosen Professor of Mathematics in California University", The New York Times, August 20, 1909
  19. "Church singer for half-hour concert", San Francisco Call, 107 (87), February 25, 1910 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection
  20. Smith, Adelaide (May 1911), An investigation of the differential equation as regards singular points (Master's thesis), University of California, Berkeley – via Google Books
  21. "Simple Service Marks Mrs. Poulson's Funeral; Last Founder of Seminary Will Be Succeeded by Miss Adelaide Smith", San Francisco Call, 114 (34), July 4, 1913 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection
  22. "Snell – Wellesley", CTA Journal, 10: 525, 1915
  23. Kodish, Bruce I. (2011), "Chapter 23 - Strange Footprints: Part 2 - Principia Mathematica", Korzybski: A Biography, Extensional Publishing, ISBN 9780970066428
  24. "Bedside school opens", Oakland Tribune, p. 4, January 8, 1934 – via Newspapers.com
  25. A Handbook of Private Schools for American Boys and Girls, 32, Sargent handbooks, 1950, p. 572
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