Former AWM President Alice T. Schafer Has Died at 94

October 16, 2009

Alice T. Schafer, who was one of the founders of the Association for Women in Mathematics and headed the organization from 1973 to 1975, died in Lexington, Mass., Sept. 27, 2009, at age 94.

The AWM's annual prize for the outstanding undergraduate woman majoring in mathematics is called the Alice T. Schafer Prize. Schafer, who had been a member of the MAA since 1953, received the MAA's Distinguished Service to Mathematics Award in 1998.

Alice Elizabeth Turner was born in Richmond, Va. She received an A.B. degree in mathematics from the University of Richmond in 1936 and a Ph.D. in 1942 from the University of Chicago. Schafer taught mathematics at Connecticut College and at Wellesley College. After retiring in 1980 as Wellesley's Helen Day Gould Professor of Mathematics, Schafer taught at Simmons College and at Marymount University (Arlington, Va.) until she was eighty-one years old.

Schafer was also active in the American Mathematical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Phi Beta Kappa.

Source: Boston Globe, Sept. 28, 2009.