Josephine Chanler

Josephine Hughes Chanler (7 April 1906 – 23 December 1992) was an American mathematician specializing in algebraic geometry.^[1]

She was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She was the only child of Louisa Castle and James Chanler. Her parents separated soon after her birth, and she grew up with her mother, who lived in Bowling Green, Kentucky and worked as a schoolteacher. As a girl she became ill with polio, and had to undergo treatment for it at intervals later in her life. When she was a high school student, she and her mother moved to Jacksonville, Florida, but they moved back to Bowling Green so that Chanler could attend the Western Kentucky State Normal School and Teacher's College. She completed a degree there in 1927, and became a high school teacher.^[1]

In 1929, Chanler and her mother moved again, to Illinois, so that Chanler could begin graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned a master's degree under the mentorship of Bessie Irving Miller, but Miller died soon afterward.^[1] She completed her doctorate there in 1933.^[2][3] Her dissertation, Poristic Double Binary Forms, was supervised by Arthur Byron Coble.^[4]

After completing her PhD, she joined the faculty at Illinois,^[5] and became an associate professor in 1944.^[6] Despite an offer to move to a college in New England, Chanler remained at Illinois for the rest of her career.^[1] She retired as an associate professor in 1971.^[1] After her retirement, she continued to tutor students.^[5]

Chanler lived with her mother until her mother's death in 1948.^[1]

Chanler era demócrata , miembro de Toastmasters International y miembro de la Iglesia Católica de Santa María . ^{[ 1 ]} Hacia 1940, declaró ser presbiteriana , pero en una conversación de 1983 se describió a sí misma como "una presbiteriana-calvinista-católica del sur con inclinaciones hacia el judaísmo y el islam y un gran respeto por el budismo, los mormones y algunos dioses hindúes". ^{[ 1 ]}

Chanler falleció en Urbana, Illinois, en 1992, tras haber estado internada en un centro de salud durante cinco años; está enterrada allí, en el cementerio Mount Hope. ^{[ 1 ]} Annette Sinclair, quien cursó con ella un curso de geometría algebraica clásica en verano, la recordó como "una excelente maestra y una persona a la que todos parecían admirar". ^{[ 7 ]}

La beca Josephine Chanler para estudiantes de pregrado en la UI fue creada en 2020 por Padmini Joshi. ^{[ 8 ]}