Nancy Cole (mathematician)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nancy Cole (October 15, 1902 – July 7, 1991) was an American mathematician who made important and pioneering contributions to Morse theory.[1]
Cole was the daughter of a Boston grocer and the descendant of Mayflower immigrants. As a high school student in Plymouth, Massachusetts, her interest in mathematics was sparked by teacher Lucia Richardson. She studied at Jackson College for Women, the women's sister school of Tufts University, from 1920 to 1922, mentored there by mathematician Edith Bush, before transferring to Vassar College, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1924. She returned to study at Radcliffe College in 1926, earned a master's degree at Radcliffe in 1929, and completed her Ph.D. in 1934.[2] Her dissertation, The Index Form Associated with an Extremaloid, was supervised by Marston Morse,[3] and she was acknowledged by Morse for her assistance in preparing his 1934 book The Calculus of Variations, which began the study of Morse theory.[1]
