10. Charlotte Angas Scott 1858 [1009]

PARENT 09. Caleb Scott 1831 [610]

CHARLOTTE ANGAS SCOTT was born at St Mary Le Highford, Lincolnshire, England on the 8 June 1858. Her father, Caleb Scott, was president of Lancashire College, a Congregational minister and known as a social reformer; his father had been a reformer as well. Caleb Scott urged his daughter, Charlotte Angas Scott, to seek a university education, unusual for women in that time. She did so: she joined ten other young women at Hitchin College, soon renamed Girton College, part of Cambridge University.

As a pioneer in women's higher education, Charlotte Angas Scott and her classmates faced severe restrictions and on their participation and activities.

Not officially permitted to take the traditional oral exam at the end of Cambridge's program, Charlotte Scott took it unofficially -- and placed eighth in the ranking overall, including all male students. At the awards ceremony, the women's names were not included in the rankings read. But male students shouted "Scott of Girton!" over the name of the male student who was announced in the eighth place.

Charlotte Angas Scott went on, then, to graduate studies at the University of London while serving as a lecturer at Girton. In 1885, she moved to the United States to join the first faculty of the newly-founded Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, the first women's college offering graduate degrees.

At Bryn Mawr, Charlotte Angas Scott promoted strict entrance policies and her efforts eventually led to the founding of the College Entrance Examination Board. Scott was the first chief examiner of the Board.

In 1909, Charlotte Scott was given the first endowed chair at Bryn Mawr, in recognition of her achievements.

Charlotte Angas Scott was a member of the council that transformed the New York Mathematical Society into the American Mathematical Society in 1895, and she served as the society's vice president in 1905. She was co-editor of the American Journal of Mathematics in 1899, and continued editing for that journal until her retirement. When arthritis forced a hiatus from publishing, Charlotte Scott took up gardening and bred a new chrysanthemum.

Charlotte Angas Scott never married, though she often visited with her relatives in England (where she was known as "Aunt Charlie"), and she also frequently visited her friend Frank Morley in Baltimore.

Charlotte Scott retired in 1925, though she remained at Bryn Mawr for a few more years until her last doctoral student had graduated.

She died in Cambridge, England on the 10 November 1831, aged 73. .