VIVIENNE MALONE MAYES

Mayes (1932-1995) was born in Waco, Texas, and graduated from a segregated school there at the age of 16. After earning her M.S. from Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, in 1954, she served as Chair of the Mathematics Department at Paul Quinn College in Waco. In 1966 she finished her degree from the University of Texas, becoming the fifth African-American woman to receive a Ph. D. in Mathematics and the first from that university. In graduate school she was very much alone as the only black and only woman. Her classmates ignored her completely, even terminating conversations if she came within earshot. She could not even enroll in on one professor's class because he did not teach blacks. Also in 1966 she became the first black faculty member at Baylor University, the institution which had rejected her as a student only five years previously. There she spent the rest of her teaching career, retiring due to ill-health in 1994.

SCOTT WARNER WILLIAMS

Williams (1943- ) was born in Staten Island, New York, and earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Lehigh University in 1969. Williams served as a Research Associate in the Department of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University from 1968 until appointed an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo in 1971, becoming a full Professor in 1985.