Ph.D.s before 1939

Before 1940, 101 Ph.D.s were awarded in mathematics at Cornell, including twenty two to women. The first, in 1872, went to Henry Turner Eddy, who was Assistant Professor in Mathematics at the time. The Cornell mathematics graduate program owes its early success to the leadership of James Oliver, Chair from 1874 to his death in 1895. The most prolific graduate advisor before 1940 was the algebraic geometer Virgil Snyder, who supervised 43 Cornell Ph.D.s.

Graduate students earning a Ph.D. in Mathematics at Cornell, 1868-1939

1868–1879

• Henry Turner Eddy, 1872
  Title: A Method of Integrating the Square Roots of Quadratics .

In 1972, Eddy received the first Ph.D. awarded at Cornell in any subject. He was an Assistant Professor in Mathematics at Cornell. He had a brilliant scientific and academic career.

1880–1889

• Hiram John Messenger, 1886
  Title: Modern Methods in Geometric Conics.
  Advisor: James Oliver.
  Career: Actuary, Cornell Trustee.

• Rollin Arthur Harris, 1888
  Title: The Theory of Images in the Representation of Functions.
  Advisor: probably, James McMahon.
  Career: Tidal Division of the US Coast and Geodesic Survey.

• Cadwallader Edwards Linthicum, 1888
  Title: On the rectification of certain curves and on certain series involved.
  Advisor: James Oliver.
  Career: Teaching, Real Estate, New York.

1890–1899

• Ida Metcalf, 1893
  Title: Geometric Duality in Space.
  Advisor: James Oliver.
  Career: Office of the Controller of New York City. Second American women to obtain a Ph.D. in mathematics (and the first at Cornell).

• Annie Louise McKinnon, 1894
  Title: Concomitant Binary Forms in Terms of the Roots.
  Advisor: James Oliver.
  Career: Professor at Wells College.

• Agnes Sime Baxter, 1895
  Title: On Abelian integrals, a resume of Neumann’s ‘Abelsche Integrele’ with comments and applications.
  Advisor: James Oliver.
  Baxter is the second Canadian Women to receive a mathematics Ph.D.

• Charles Worthington Comstock, 1898
  Title: The Application of Quaternions to the Analysis of Internal Stress.
  Advisor: Unknown.
  Comstock received a M.C.E. degree in 1894. He was an Instructor in Civil Engineering until 1897 when he left Cornell for a position at the Colorado State School of Mines. He earned his Ph.D. in 1898 in absentia. His dissertation is very mathematical and refers to ideas suggested by H.T. Eddy.

1900–1909

• William Benjamin Fite, 1901
  Title: On Metabelian Groups.
  Advisor: George A. Miller.
  Career: Cornell, Columbia University.

• Harry Waldo Kuhn, 1901
  Title: On Imprimitive Substitution Groups.
  Advisor: George A. Miller.
  Career: Ohio State University.

• Peter Field, 1902
  Title: On the Forms of Unicursal Quintic Curves.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: University of Michigan.

• Henry Lewis (Louis) Rietz, 1902
  Title: On Primitive Groups of Odd Orders.
  Advisor: George A. Miller.
  Career: University of Iowa. Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians, Toronto 1924.

• Clarence Lemuel Elisha Moore , 1904
  Title: Classification of the Surfaces of Singularities of the Quadratic Spherical Complex.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

• John Wesley Young , 1904
  Title: On the Group of the Sign (0, 3, 2, 4, ∞) and the Functions Belonging to It.
  Advisor: John Irwin Hutchinson.
  Career: Dartmouth College.

• Oscar Perry Akers, 1906
  Title: On the Congruence of Axes in a Bundle of Linear Line Complexes.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Allegheny College.

• Elmer Clifford Colpitts, 1906
  Title: On Twisted Quintic Curves.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Washington State University.

• Richard Morris, 1906
  Title: On the Automorpic Functions of the Group (0,3,l1,l2,l3).
  Advisor: John Irwin Hutchinson.
  Career: Rutgers University.

• Charles Herschel Sisam, 1906
  Title: On the Classification of Scrolls of Order Seven Having a Rectilinear Directrix.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Colorado College. Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians, Toronto 1924 and Bologna, 1928.

• Francis Robert Sharpe , 1907
  Title: The General Circulation of The Atmosphere.
  Advisor: James McMahon.
  Career: Cornell University (served as Chair 1923-26).

• Clyde Firman Craig, 1908
  Title: On a Class of Hyperfuchsian Functions.
  Advisor: John Irwin Hutchinson.
  Career: Cornell.

• Anna Lavinia Van Benschoten, 1908
  Title: The Birational Transformations of Algebraic Curves of Genus Four.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Wells College.

• Joseph Vance McKelvey, 1909
  Title: The Groups of Birational Transformations of Algebraic Curves of Genus 5.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Cornell, Iowa State University. Served in Word War I.

1910-1919

• Harold Bartlett Curtis, 1910
  Title: Hyperabelian Functions Expressible by Theta Series.
  Advisor: John Irwin Hutchinson.
  Career: Columbia, Northwestern and Lake Forest College.

• Helen Brewster Owens, 1910
  Title: Conjugate Line Congruences of the Third Order Defined by a Family of Quadrics.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Cornell (first women to serve as Instructor in the department), Pennsylvania State University, Associate Editor of the American Mathematical Monthly.

• Paul Prentice Boyd, 1911
  Title: On the Perspective Jonquieres Involutions Associated with the (2, 1) Ternary Correspondence.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder. Career: University of Kentucky (including Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences 1917-1947)

• Stanley Eugene Brasefield, 1912
  Title: A Study of Certain Force Fields.
  Advisor: James McMahon.
  Career: Rutgers University.

• Frank Millett Morgan, 1912
  Title: Involutorial Transformations.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Dartmouth, Head master of the Clark School in Hanover, NH.

• Robert Wilbur Burgess, 1914
  Title: The Uniform Motion of a Sphere Through a Viscous Liquid.
  Advisor: Francis Robert Sharpe.
  Career: Purdue University, Cornell and Brown University, Western Electric Company, 1924-1952, Director of U.S. Census Bureau, 1953-1961. Served during World War I.

• Joseph Rosenbaum, 1914
  Title: Mixed Linear Integral Equations over a Two-Dimensional Region.
  Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz.
  Career: The Milford Academy.

• Anna Helen Tappan, 1914
  Title: Plane Sextic Curves Invariant under Birational Transformations.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: The Western College for Women, Oxford, Ohio (served as Head of Mathematics and Dean).

• Lewis Clark Cox, 1915
  Title: The Finite Groups of Birational Transformations of a Net of Cubics.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Instructor at Purdue University.

• Carl Joseph West, 1915
  Title: On Certain Formulas for Representing Statistical Data.
  Advisor: James McMahon.
  Career: The Ohio State University, Statistician.

• Joseph Vital DePorte, 1916
  Title: Irrational Involutions on Algebraic Curves.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Satistician, National Safety Council.

• Chester Claremont Camp, 1917
  Title: An Extension of the Sturm-Liouville Expansion.
  Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz.
  Career: University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

• Hans H. Dalaker, 1917
  Title: On the Automorphic Functions of the Group (0, 3; 4, 6).
  Advisor: John Irwin Hutchinson.
  Career: The University of Minnesota (where a fellowship is named after him).

• Temple Rice Hollcroft , 1917
  Title: A Classification of General (2,3) Point Correspondences Between Two Planes.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Wells College, Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians, Zurich 1932.

• Anna Mayme Howe, 1917
  Title: The Classification of Plane Involutions of Order 3.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Newcomb College at Tulane University.

• George Merritt Robison, 1919
  Title: Divergent Double Sequences and Series.
  Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz. 

     Career: Susquehanna University.

1920-1929

• Alan Ditchfield Campbell, 1923
  Title: Advanced Analytic Geometry.
  Advisor: Arthur Ranum.
  Career: Syracuse University, disappeared without trace while serving as Chair in 1942.

• David Sherman Morse, 1923
  Title: Relative inclusiveness of certain definitions of summability.
  Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz.
  Career: Union College, NY.

• Jesse Otto Osborn, 1923
  Title: A Study of the Rational Involutorial Transformations in Space Which Leave a Web of Sextic Surfaces Invariant.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: author of children mathematical books.

• Julia Trueman Colpitts, 1924
  Title: Entire Functions Defined by Certain Power Series.
  Advisor: John Irwin Hutchinson (and C.F. Craig).
  Career: Iowa State University. Served as president of the Women's Scientific Society.

• Julia Dale, 1924
  Title: Some Properties of the Exponential Mean.
  Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz.
  Career: The University of Oklahoma, Delta State College in Cleveland, Duke University where an undergraduate prize is named after her.

• William Whitfield Elliott, 1924
  Title: Generalized Green's functions for compatible differential systems.
  Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz.
  Career: Duke University.

• Marian Marsh Torrey, 1924
  Title: Classifications of Monoidal Involutions Having a Fixed Tangent Cone.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Goucher College (served as Chair).

• Elbert Frank Cox, 1925
  Title:Polynomial Solutions of Difference Equations.
  Advisor: Lloyd Garrison Williams.
  Career: West Virginia State College, Howard University. First African American to earn a doctorate in mathematics.

• Fay Farnum, 1926
  Title: On Triadic Cremona Nets of Plane Curves.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: New York University, Iowa State University and The University of Arizona.

• Bradford Fisher Kimball, 1926
  Title: Geodesics on a Toroid.
  Advisor: Marston Morse.
  Career: Statistician.

• Donald Everett Richmond , 1926
  Title: Geodesics On Surfaces of Genus Zero With Knobs.
  Advisor: Marston Morse.
  Career: Williams College.

• Percy Austin Fraleigh, 1927
  Title: Regular Bilinear Transformations of Sequences.
  Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz.
  Career: The Flint Professor of Mathematics at the University of Vermont.

• Florence Marie Mears, 1927
  Title: A Special Function of One Variable.
  Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz.
  Career: The George Washington University.

• Hillel Poritsky, 1927
  Title: Topics in Potential Theory.
  Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz.
  Career: Applied Mathematician, General Electric Co.

• Hazel Edith Schoonmaker (later, Wilson), 1927
  Title: Non-Monoidal Involutions Having a Congruence of Invariant Conics.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: New Jersey College for Women, Hartwick College and Jackson State University.

• Howard Conway Shaub, 1927
  Title: Rational Involutorial Transformations in S(4) Which Leave Invariant Four-Fold-Infinity Quadric Varieties.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Washington and Jefferson College.

• Arthur Keller Waltz, 1927
  Title: The Steady Flow of Liquid Through a cCircular Hole in an Infinite Plane.
  Advisor: Francis R. Sharpe.
  Career: College of Steubenville, Ohio.

• Hannibal Albert Davis, 1928
  Title: Involutorial Transformations Belonging to a Linear Complex.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: The University of West Virginia.

• Howard Adams DoBell, 1928
  Title: On the Geometry of the Triangle.
  Advisor: Walter B. Carver.
  Career: New York State College for Teachers, Albany, N.Y.

• Ralph Lent Jeffery, 1928
  Title: The Uniform Approximation of a Sequence of Integrals and the Sequence of Functions Which Define a Definite Integral Containing a Parameter.
  Advisor: David C. Gillespie.
  Career: Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. The building housing Mathematics and Statistics at Queen's University is named after him. Served as President of Royal Society of Canada and of the Canadian Mathematical Society. The Jeffery–Williams Prize is a mathematics award presented annually by the Canadian Mathematical Society.

• William Thomas MacCreadie, 1928
  Title: On the Stability of the Motion of a Viscous Fluid.
  Advisor: Francis R. Sharpe.
  Career: Taught at Bucknell University.

• Joseph Crawford Polley, 1929
  Title: Rational Surfaces Defined by Linear Systems of Plane Curves C(3N):(A exp n))(B exp (n-1)).
  Advisor: Francis R. Sharpe.
  Career: Wabash College.

• Franklin Grandey Williams, 1929
  Title: Families of Plane Involutions of Genus 2 or 3.
  Advisor: Francis R. Sharpe.
  Career: Susquehanna University.

1930-1939

• Ralph Palmer Agnew, 1930
  Title: The Behavior of Bounds and Oscillations of Sequences of Functions Under Regular Transformations. 

     Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz.
     Career: National Research Fellow, Cornell (served as Chair 1940-50).

• Walter Hetherington Durfee, 1930
  Title: Summation Factors Which are Powers of a Complex Variable.
  Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz.
  Career: Hobart and Smith Colleges (Head of Mathematics, Dean, Acting President, Provost). W.H. Durfee is the son of William Pitt Durfee who received his Mathematics Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins in 1883 under J.J. Sylvester and was Professor of Mathematics at Hobart and Smith. He is the father of William Hetherington Durfee who earned his Mathematics Ph.D. at Cornell in 1943 and the grandfather of Alan Hetherington Durfee who earned is Mathematics Ph.D. at Cornell in 1971.

• Leaman Andrew Dye, 1930
  Title: Involutorial transformations in S(3) of order n with an n-1 fold line.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: The Citadel.

• Harry Isler Lane, 1930
  Title: The Separation of the Projective Plane by the Lines Joining Six Points.
  Advisor: Walter B. Carver.
  Career: Hendrix College.

• Ethel Isabel Moody, 1930
  Title: A Cremona Group of Order Thirty-two of Cubic Transformations in Three-Dimensional Space.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Sweet Briar College and Pennsylvania State College.

• Helen Calkins, 1931
  Title: Some Implicit Functional Theorems.
  Advisor: Charles Frederick Roos.
  Career: Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University).

• Thomas Watkins Hatcher, 1931
  Title: Symmetric Strain in an Infinite Plate with a circular Hole.
  Advisor: Francis R. Sharpe.
  Career: Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

• Horace Newton Hubbs, 1931
  Title: Analytic Study of Rational Quintic Surfaces Having No Multiple Curves.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Hobart and Smith Colleges (including acting President, 1955).

• William Robert Hutcherson, 1931
  Title: Maps of Certain Cyclic Involutions on Two Dimensional Carriers.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Northwestern State University in Louisiana and the University of Florida.

• Louis John Paradiso, 1931
  Title: Solutions of Bounded Variation of the Fredholm Stieltjes Integral Equation.
  Advisor: David C. Gillespie.
  Career: Managing Director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

• Charles Chapman Torrance, 1931
  Title: On Plane Cremona Triadic Characteristics.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Naval Postgraduate School. Invited speaker at the 1936 International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo.

• Ralph Alexander Beaver, 1932
  Title: Finite Plane Euclidean Geometry.
  Advisor: Walter B. Carver.
  Career: New York State College, Albany.

• Amos Hale Black, 1932
  Title: Types of Involutorial Space Transformations Associated with Certain Rational Curves.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Southern Illinois University.

• Robert Horton Cameron, 1932
  Title: Almost Periodic Transformations.
  Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwirz.
  Career: National Research Council Fellowship. Massachusetts and University of Minnesota. Chauvenet Prize in 1944.

• Evelyn Teresa Carroll (later, Rusk), 1932
  Title: Systems of Involutorial Birational Transformations Contained Multiply in Special Linear Line Complexes.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Dartmouth College and Wells College.

• John Montgomery Clarkson, 1932
  Title: Some Involutorial Line Transformations Interpreted as Points of V(2) of S(5).
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: North Carolina State University.

• Ira Owen Horsfall, 1932
  Title: Transformations Associated with the Lines of a Cubic, Quadratic or Linear Complex.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Snow College. Director of the Extension Division at the University of Utah.

• Edwin Joseph Purcell, 1932
  Title: Involutorial Space Cremona Transformations Determined by Non-Linear Null Reciprocities.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: University of Arizona.

• August Sisk, 1932
  Title: The Plane Symmetric Quintic Cremona Involutions.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: ?

• Helen Schlauch Adams (later, Infeld), 1933
  Title: On the Normal Rational n-ic.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Hunter College. Moved to Poland in 1950.

• Edwin Harold Hadlock, 1933
  Title: On the Progressions Associated with a Ternary Quadratic Form.
  Advisor: Burton W. Jones.
  Career: University of Florida.

• Roberta Frances Johnson, 1933
  Title: Involutions of Order 2 Associated with Surfaces of Genera PA=PG=0,P2=P3=0.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Colorado State University and The University of Colorado.

• Vivian Streeter Lawrence, 1933
  Title: Closed Orbits in Central Distance Force Fields.
  Advisor: David C. Gillespie.
  Career: Cornell, West Point.

• Joseph Lev, 1933
  Title: The Effects of Linear Transformations on the Divergence of Bounded Sequences and Functions.
  Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz.
  Career: Statistician, New York State Department of Civil Service.

• Herbert Earl Spencer, 1933
  Title: On Convergence and Oscillation of Transforms of Sequences of Vectors.
  Advisor: Ralph Agnew.
  Career: Presbyterian College, SC.

• John Albert Hyden, 1934
  Title: The Weddle and Kummer Surfaces for Restricted Positions of Six Base Points.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Vanderbilt University.

• Clarence Raymond Wyllie, 1934
  Title: Space Curves Belonging to a Linear Line Complex.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Ohio State University, the Air Force Institute of Technology, the University of Utah, and Furman University.

• Gertrude K. Blanch, 1935
  Title: Properties of the Veneroni Transformation in S(4).
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Hunter College, Technical Director of the Mathematical Tables Project in New York City. Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1962); Federal Woman's Award (1964).

• Livingston Hunter Chambers, 1935
  Title: On (2,2) Planar Correspondences.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Naval Academy.

• Harriet Frances Montague, 1935
  Title: Certain Non-Involutorial Cremona Transformations of Hyperspace.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: University of Buffalo. The Harriet F. Montague Award is given each year to a junior who has demonstrated "intellectual and creative promise in mathematics.”

• John Adam Fitz Randolph, 1935
  Title: Carathéodory Measure and a Generalization of the Gauss-Green Lemma.
  Advisor: David C. Gillespie.
  Career: Cornell and the University of Rochester.

• Lawrence Henry Bowen, 1936
  Title: Composite Double Curves on Rational Ruled Surfaces.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Greenville Women College.

• Ross Arthur Harrison, 1936
  Title: Cremona Webs in S(3) Without Base Curves.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: ?

• Jesse Emmert Ikenberry, 1937
  Title: An Involutorial Transformation with a Multiple Correspondence on Lines Joining Conjugate Points.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Franklin and Marshall College.

• Lloyd Lincoln Lowenstein, 1937
  Title: Linear Equations with an Infinity of Unknowns.
  Advisor: Ralph Agnew.
  Career: Arizona State University.

• George Henry Barone, 1938
  Title: Limit Points of Sequences and their Transforms by Methods of Summability.
  Advisor: Ralph Agnew.
  Career: The Citadel.

• Charles Erwin Clark, 1938
  Title: Simultaneous Invariants of Complex and Subcomplex.
  Advisor: William Flexner.
  Career: Emory University.

• Reuben Roosevelt McDaniel, 1938
  Title: Approximation to Algebraic Numbers by Means of Periodic Sequences of Transformations on Quadratic Forms.
  Advisor: Burton W. Jones.
  Career: Virginia State College.

• Clair Joseph Blackall, 1939
  Title: On Volume Integral Invariants of Non-Holonomic Dynamical Systems.
  Advisor: Daniel C. Lewis.
  Career: University of Toledo.

• Sara Louise Nelson, 1939
  Title: Cremona Transformations Belonging to a Family of Cubic Curves.
  Advisor: Virgil Snyder.
  Career: Georgia College. Last student of Virgil Snyder