Geraldine Claudette Darden

Geraldine Claudette Darden (born July 22, 1936) is an American mathematician. She was the fourteenth African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. She was born in Nansemond County, Virginia. Darden earned her degrees in mathematics from Hampton Institute (B.S., 1957) an historically black institute; an M.S. (1960) University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and her M.S. (1965) and a Ph.D. (1967) from Syracuse University. Her dissertation was completed under the auspices of James Reid, Ph.D., entitled, "On the Direct Sums of Cyclic Groups".

Initially Darden taught at S.H. Clarke Junior High School in Portsmouth, Virginia, immediately after receiving her undergraduate degree in 1957. In the summer of 1958, Darden saw an opportunity for aspiring mathematicians created by the launch of Russian satellite Sputnik and ensuing US interest in mathematics and science a year earlier, and she applied for and received a National Science Foundation grant to attend the Summer Institute in Mathematics held at North Carolina Central University. Here she met Marjorie Lee Browne, the mathematician who directed the Institute, who would encourage Darden to go on to graduate school at Syracuse.

In addition to teaching, Darden also co-wrote selected papers on pre-calculus, with textbook author Tom Apostol, Gulbank D. Chakerian, and John D. Neff. Reprinted from the American Mathematical Monthly (vols. 1--81) and from the Mathematics Magazine (vols. 1--49). The Raymond W. Brink Selected Mathematical Papers, Vol. 1. The Mathematical Association of America, Washington, D.C., 1977. pp. xvii+469, ISBN 0-88385-202-0