Agnes Scott College

Annie Dale Biddle Andrews

December 13, 1885 - April 14, 1940


Annie Dale Biddle was born in Hanford, California, the youngest child of Samuel E. Biddle and A. A. Biddle. She received her B.A. degree from the University of California in 1908, and in 1911 she became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley. Her dissertation, written under the joint supervision of Derrick Lehmer and Mellen Haskell, was on "Constructive theory of the unicursal plane quartic by synthetic methods" [Abstract].

Biddle was an instructor in mathematics at the University of Washington in 1911-1912. On October 7, 1912 she married Wilhelm Samuel Andrews. They had a daughter, born in 1913, and a son, born in 1919. Annie Andrews was an instructor in mathematics at the University of California during various years between 1915 and 1932. For example, during 1922-23 she taught Mathematical Theory of Investment; Plane Analytic Geometry and Differential Calculus; Solid Analytic Geometry, Integral Calculus, and Infinite Series; College Algebra; and Introduction to Projective Geometry. She was dismissed from her teaching position when the mathematics department was reorganized in 1933. Also in March, 1933, she presented a research paper on "The space quartic of the second kind by synthetic methods" at a meeting of the American Mathematical Society in Palo Alto. The abstract for the talk was published in the AMS Bulletin (vol. 39 (1933), 205-206):

One set of rulings of a quadric surface κ and the tangent planes to a quadric cone K are put into projective one to one correspondence by means of a pencil of planes ΣA of the first order. The locus Q of points of intersection of corresponding elements is a space quartic of the second kind. To each point A of Q corresponds a ΣA, the locus of whose axes is a quadric cone Σ. The various relations between K, Q, and Σ are developed. (Received February 18, 1933.)

After a two year illness, Andrews died on April 14, 1940, survived by her husband and two children. During the last four years of her life she took an active interest in public affairs and charitable work in addition to her mathematical research.

References

  1. Helen Brewster Owens Papers. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College.
  2. Author Profile at zbMath
  3. Mathematics Genealogy Project