Evelyn Boyd Granville

Evelyn Boyd Granville was born on the first of May 1924 in Washington, D.C., the younger of two daughters. Her father, William Boyd, worked as a custodian in the family's apartment building and took on various odd jobs during the Great Depression; he separated from the family when Evelyn was young. She and her older sister were raised chiefly by their mother, Julia Boyd, and their aunt, Louise Walker — both of whom earned their living as examiners at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Encouraged by devoted teachers, Evelyn excelled at the academically rigorous, then-segregated Dunbar High School, from which she graduated as valedictorian.

She studied at Smith College and then entered Yale University, where, in 1949, under the direction of Einar Hille, she completed her doctorate in mathematics with a dissertation titled "On Laguerre Series in the Complex Domain." With that degree she became the second African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from an American university.

After teaching and government service, Granville joined IBM in 1956 as a computer programmer. When IBM contracted with NASA, she moved to the Vanguard Computing Center in Washington, D.C., writing programs that traced the paths of vehicles in space and analyzed satellite orbits during the era of the Vanguard and Mercury programs — work she called the most interesting of her lifetime. She later contributed to the Apollo program and devoted decades to teaching mathematics and reforming its instruction, receiving an honorary doctorate from Smith College in 1989.

Evelyn Boyd Granville died on the 27th of June 2023, at the age of ninety-nine. May her name endure among those who charted paths to the stars and lit the way for all who followed.