Gillie Larew
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Gillie Aldah Larew (July 28, 1882 – January 2, 1977)[1] was an American mathematician, the first alumna of Randolph–Macon Woman's College (R-MWC) to become a full professor there, and eventually the dean of the college.[2]
Larew was the daughter of farmer and lawyer Captain I.H. Larew, and was born on July 28, 1882, in Pulaski County, Virginia. Her father had eleven children, three of whom died before Larew was born and five of whom were from a second wife after Larew's mother died in 1887. She was privately schooled before attending Randolph–Macon Woman's College from 1899 to 1903.[1]
In 1906 she began studying for a master's degree in mathematics at the University of Chicago over the summers, during breaks from her teaching position, completing the degree in 1911.[3] From 1914 to 1916 she studied there again for a doctorate.[1] Her dissertation concerned the calculus of variations; it was Necessary Conditions for the Problem of Mayer in the Calculus of Variations, and was supervised by Gilbert Ames Bliss.[4] It was one of the earliest works of mathematics to call Lagrange multipliers by that name.[5]
