Born: 1851 (Granville, Ohio)
Died: 1930
Biography:
Ellen Amanda Hayes (September 23, 1851 – October 27, 1930) was an American mathematician and astronomer. She was a controversial figure, not only because of being a female college professor but also for embracing many radical causes.
Early Life:
Hayes was born in Granville, Ohio, the first of six children to Ruth Rebecca (Wolcott) Hayes and Charles Coleman Hayes. At the age of seven, she studied at the Centerville school, a one-room ungraded public school, and in 1867, at sixteen, she was employed to teach at a country school. In 1872, she entered the preparatory department at Oberlin College and was admitted as a freshman in 1875, where her main studies were mathematics and science.
Work:
Three years after her admission, Hayes obtained a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin in 1878 and began teaching at Adrian College. She was also active in astronomy and determined the orbit of the newly discovered asteroid 267 Tirza while studying at the Leander McCormick Observatory at the University of Virginia.
From 1879 until her retirement in 1916, Hayes taught at Wellesley College, where she became the head of the mathematics department in 1888 and the head of the new department in applied mathematics in 1897. According to one of her colleagues, she was removed from being the head of the mathematics department due to disputes over her admission policy.
Hayes wore utilitarian clothes instead of the fashionable garments worn by many women of her day, and she was described as strong-willed. As a mathematics professor, she was controversial. She questioned the truth of the Bible in front of students. She had very high standards of education, giving more than half of her students D grades during the first year she taught from her trigonometry book. Despite her rigorous teaching style, she had a loyal following of students.
In 1888, Hayes wrote a regular column for the Wellesley College newspaper discussing women’s suffrage and dress reform. In the 1890s, she founded a chapter of the temperance movement. In 1891, Hayes was elected one of the first six women to become members of the New York Mathematical Society (later the American Mathematical Society). She was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1905.
Awards:
– Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1905)
Ellen Hayes was a dauntless radical throughout her life. In the 1880s, she was already wearing short skirts, challenging the norms of the time. In the 1890s, she became a staunch advocate of women’s suffrage, fighting for women’s right to vote. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, Hayes embraced socialism wholeheartedly, showing her commitment to social and economic equality.
Even after her retirement, and until her death in 1930, Hayes remained actively connected with an experiment in adult education for working girls. She was fearless, devoted, and at times a thorn in the flesh of the conservative establishment. Ellen Hayes’s contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and social causes solidify her place as a trailblazer in women’s history.