Mathematician and programmer, Evelyn Boyd Granville, was born Evelyn Boyd was born in Washington, D.C. on May 1st, 1929. Her parents separated when she was still young and, together with her elder sister, she was brought up in the Black community in Washington, D.C by her mother and aunt, who both worked at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Evelyn attended racially segregated elementary school, junior high school, and high schools. She was happy at school and was an outstanding pupil. The high school which she attended was Dunbar High School, an academically oriented school for Black students which aimed to send their pupils to the top universities.
Her outstanding Black teachers at Dunbar High School encouraged and prepared her for success. Boyd graduated as valedictorian and, with the help of her aunt and a scholarship, she enrolled in Smith College in Massachusetts in 1941 and grew passionate about mathematics, theoretical physics, and astronomy. At Smith, Boyd was one of a handful of Black women on campus, though she claims not to have felt disadvantaged by her minority status. As a senior, Evelyn Boyd was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and qualified for associate membership in Sigma Xi. Evelyn graduated with academic honors, in 1945, a summa cum laude designation with a fellowship for graduate study.
She was awarded a scholarship from the Smith Student Aid Society of Smith College to undertake studies for her doctorate. Both the University of Michigan and Yale University offered her a place but only Yale was able to provide the additional financial support she required. Evelyn Boyd worked with Einar Hille, a distinguished mathematician in the field of functional analysis, as her Ph.D. faculty advisor at Yale University. She wrote a thesis titled “On Laguerre Series in the Complex Domain”. In 1949, together with Marjorie Lee Browne who graduated from the University of Michigan in the same year, she became one of the first Black American women to be awarded a Ph.D. in mathematics.
Following graduate school, Boyd went to New York University Institute for Mathematics and performed research and teaching there. She also taught as a part-time instructor in the mathematics department of New York University. After applying unsuccessfully for a teaching post at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, she accepted an offer of an associate professorship at Fisk University in Nashville, taking up the post in 1950. In the spring of 1952, Boyd decided to seek a government job and return to Washington, D.C. During her summers, she would return to Washington, D.C. and work at the National Bureau of Standards.
The work entailed consulting with ordinance engineers and scientists on the mathematical analysis of problems related to the development of missile fuses. Evelyn, then worked as a computer analyst, and lastly a mathematician. In December 1955 Boyd left the National Bureau of Standards and she began work for IBM in January of the following year. At first she worked in Washington writing programs for the IBM 650 computer. In 1957 she moved to New York City to take up a post as a consultant on numerical analysis at the New York City Data Processing Center of the Service Bureau Corporation, which was part of IBM. There she learned a computer language called SOAP.
When the United States space program began to move rapidly forward, NASA contracted International Business Machines (IBM) to write software for them. Evelyn was happy to return to Washington D.C. as one of a team of IBM mathematicians, working with Project Vanguard. Project Vanguard aimed to launch a scientific satellite into orbit around Earth, prove that it had entered orbit, and use it to conduct scientific experiments. During Boyd’s vacation in southern California, she met her future husband at a community church. In November 1960 Evelyn Boyd married married Reverend G. Mansfield Collins, and moved to Los Angeles. She joined the technical staff of a private company called Space Technology Laboratories (STL).
She was part of the team that calculated the paths of manned space vehicles, beginning with NASA's Project Vanguard & Project Mercury, and later the Apollo program, where she performed moon landing calculations as technical support for engineers. She later described her work on Project Mercury as “one of the highlights” of her IBM career. Granville left STL in 1962 for a more lucrative position at North American Aviation (NAA). In the 1967 Granville’s marriage broke up and she returned to the academic world, accepting a teaching post at California State University in Los Angeles. Her job involved undergraduate teaching and she taught both numerical analysis and computer programming.
Another role was in mathematical education and she was involved in the mathematical education of those training to be elementary school teachers. This interest in mathematical education led to her involvement with the Miller Mathematics Improvement Program. As part of this program she taught mathematics for two hours each day at an elementary school in Los Angeles during session 1968-69. Out of this experience came her joint publication with Jason Frand Theory and Applications of Mathematics for Teachers (1975). The book was well received and adopted in many schools. Three years later a second edition was published but fashions change in teaching mathematics and soon after this the book ceased to be relevant to current courses.
Evelyn Boyd had married Edward V Granville, a real estate broker in 1970 and the couple moved to East Texas in 1984. She taught at Texas College from 1985 to 1988, teaching on a newly instigated computer science course. Still Granville did not want to leave the academic world and she taught at the University of Texas at Tyler, where she held the Sam A Lindsey Chair, and retired in 1997. After retirment, she got a call from a public relations person working for Dow Chemical company. They were looking for someone who can visit middle schools to talk to children about the importance of mathematics. So Evelyn and her husband traveled several times a month to visit middle schools to talk to them about the importance of studying mathematics.
At the end of 1999, Dow decided that it was the end of the program. Granville’s relationships with professional and service organizations and boards include the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the American Association of University Women, where she focused on education and mathematics. Other organizations include the U.S. Civil Service Panel of Examiners of the Department of Commerce and the Psychology Examining Committee of the Board of Medical Examiners of the State of California. Evelyn made a name for herself despite the hardships faced as a Black woman, during a time where opportunities for Black men and women were limited.