Evelyn Boyd Granville

American academic (1924–2023)

Evelyn Boyd Granville (May 1, 1924 – June 27, 2023) was the second African American woman to receive a Ph. D. in mathematics from an American university; she earned it in 1949 from Yale University. She graduated from Smith College in 1945. She performed pioneering work in the field of computing.

Evelyn Boyd was born in Washington, D. C.; her father worked odd jobs due to the Great Depression but separated from her mother when Boyd was young. Boyd and her older sister were raised by her mother and aunt, who both worked at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. She was valedictorian at Dunbar High School, which at that time was a segregated but academically competitive school for black students in Washington.

Boyd married Reverend Gamaliele Mansifeld Collins in 1961. In 1967, Boyd and Collins divorced. She married realtor Edward V. Granville in 1970. After Edward passed, she returned to Washington, D. C. in 2010 and settled into retirement, "where she regularly bristled when she heard anyone say that "women can't do math"." Granville died at her apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland on June 27, 2023, at the age of 99. The Evelyn Boyd Granville papers are located in Smith College's Special Collections, and were donated by Granville in 2015.

In 1989, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Smith College, the first one given by an American institution to an African American woman mathematician. Granville was appointed to the Sam A. Lindsey Chair of the University of Texas at Tyler (1990 1991). In 1998, Granville was honoured by the National Academy of Engineering. In 1999, the United States National Academy of Sciences inducted her into its Portrait Collection of African Americans in Science. In 2000, she was awarded the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association's highest honour. In 2001, she was cited in the Virginia state senate's Joint Resolution No. 377, Designating February 25 as "African American Scientist and Inventor Day." In 2006 she was awarded an honorary degree by Spelman College. In 2016, technology firm New Relic's Mount Codemore initiative named her as one of "four giants of women's contributions to science and technology". In 2019, she was recognized by Mathematically Gifted & Black as a Black History Month Honoree.