Clara Eliza Smith facts for kids

Clara Eliza Smith (born May 20, 1865 – died May 12, 1943) was an American mathematician. She was known for her work in complex analysis, which is a branch of mathematics dealing with special kinds of numbers. She became a very important professor of mathematics at Wellesley College.

Early Life and Education

Clara Eliza Smith was born in Northford, Connecticut. Her parents were Georgiana and Edward Smith. She went to Mount Holyoke College. At that time, it was a seminary, which was a school that taught many subjects, including math. She also studied art at Yale University.

Her studies at Mount Holyoke included subjects like geometry and trigonometry. In 1885, she finished her program there. Later, she worked as an art teacher. She taught at the Bloomsburg State Normal School in Pennsylvania from 1889 to 1898.

In 1901, Clara returned to Yale University to study mathematics further. She earned a bachelor's degree from Mount Holyoke in 1902 by taking an exam. In 1904, she earned her Ph.D. from Yale. A Ph.D. is a very high university degree. Her special research paper, called a dissertation, was about something called Bessel functions. These are special mathematical functions used to solve certain problems.

Teaching Career

In 1906, Clara Smith started teaching mathematics at Wellesley College. She first worked as a substitute teacher. For a short time, she taught at the Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. But by 1908, she was back at Wellesley as a regular teacher.

Clara became a very respected professor. In 1924, she was named the Helen Day Gould Professor. This was a special and important teaching position. She taught at Wellesley until she retired in 1934.

Contributions to Mathematics

At Wellesley, Clara Smith was especially known for her course on complex analysis. This is a challenging area of mathematics. She also wrote two math textbooks with another mathematician, Helen Abbot Merrill. These books were Selected Topics in Higher Algebra (published in 1914) and A First Course in Higher Algebra (published in 1917). These books helped many students learn advanced algebra.