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Margaret Maxfield

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Margaret Alice Waugh Maxfield (February 23, 1926 – December 20, 2016)[1][2] was an American mathematician and mathematics book author.

Education and personal life[edit]

Margaret Waugh was born on February 23, 1926, in Willimantic, Connecticut.[1][2] Her father was agricultural economist Frederick V. Waugh and her grandfather was horticulturist Frank Albert Waugh.[3]

She was active in the mathematics club at Oberlin College in the mid-1940s,[4] and graduated from Oberlin in 1947.[5][2] After earning a master's degree in 1948 from the University of Wisconsin,[2] she completed her Ph.D. in 1951 at the University of Oregon. Her dissertation, Fermat's Theorem for Matrices over a Modular Ring, was supervised by Ivan M. Niven.[6] In 1948 she had married John Edward Maxfield, another student at Wisconsin and the University of Oregon who became her frequent collaborator.[7]

As students, both Maxfields visited the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, then known as the Naval Ordnance Test Station, in the summers. After completing their doctorates they worked at the station from 1951 until 1960,[8] when John Maxfield took a succession of academic posts at the University of Florida, Kansas State University, and (beginning in 1981) at Louisiana Tech University.[7] Margaret, also, became a professor of business at Kansas State,[9] and a professor of mathematics and statistics at Louisiana Tech.[10]

By 2011 Maxfield had retired, but was still active in mathematics, and noted to her alumni magazine that she was using Wikipedia to find bibliographic material for her papers.[5] She died on December 20, 2016, in Placerville, California.[1][2]

Contributions[edit]

While at the Naval Ordnance Test Station, Maxfield coauthored the book Statistics Manual: With Examples Taken from Ordnance Development, with Edwin L. Crow and Frances A. Davis. It was published by the station in 1955, and reprinted by Dover Books in 1960.[11]

With John Maxfield, she was also the coauthor of Contemporary Mathematics for General Education: Algebra (Allyn and Bacon, 1963, also with S. Gould Sadler)[7] Abstract Algebra and Solution By Radicals (W. B. Saunders, 1971; reprinted by Dover Books, 1992),[12] Discovering Number Theory (W. B. Saunders, 1972),[13] and Keys to Mathematics (W. B. Saunders, 1973)[14]

Maxfield was one of the 1968 winners of the Lester R. Ford Award of the Mathematical Association of America for a paper with her father on the rational approximation of square roots.[15]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c "Margaret W. Maxfield", Placerville Mountain Democrat, December 23, 2016
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Murray, Margaret A. M. (July 21, 2017), "Margaret Waugh Maxfield, Oregon 1951", Women Becoming Mathematicians: American women mathematics PhDs 1940–1959
  3. ^ For the connection to her father see the dedication to Abstract Algebra and Solution by Radicals
  4. ^ "Clubs and Allied Activities", The American Mathematical Monthly, 52 (7): 388–390, August–September 1945, doi:10.1080/00029890.1945.11991592, JSTOR 2304642
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b "Alumni notes", Alumni Newsletter, Oberlin Department of Mathematics, p. 2, Spring 2011 – via Yumpu
  6. ^ Margaret Maxfield at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b c Ehrlich, Paul, "Chapter 9: The John E. Maxfield and A.D. Wallace Years", Mathematics at the University of Florida in Gainesville, the first 65 years, retrieved 2020-05-14
  8. ^ "Florida To Gain Two Top Mathematicians: Maxfields Leave" (PDF), The Rocketeer, pp. 1, 4, June 24, 1960
  9. ^ "Foreign license study", Manhattan Mercury, December 7, 1980 – via Newspapers.com
  10. ^ "About the author" from Abstract Algebra and Solution by Radicals states: "Margaret W. Maxfield was a Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Louisiana Technical University".
  11. ^ Reviews of Statistics Manual:
  12. ^ Reviews of Abstract Algebra and Solution By Radicals: For 1992 reprint see MR1216879.
  13. ^ Reviews of Discovering Number Theory:
  14. ^ Review of Keys to Mathematics:
    • Skeen, Kenneth C. (December 1973), The Mathematics Teacher, 66 (8): 735–736, JSTOR 27959504{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
  15. ^ Paul R. Halmos - Lester R. Ford Awards, Mathematical Association of America; see also Side-and-Diagonal Numbers, Mathematical Association of America
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