Carolyn Ray Boone Mahoney (born 1946) is an American mathematician who served as President of

Lincoln University of Missouri Lincoln University (Lincoln U) is a public, historically black, land-grant university in Jefferson City, Missouri. Founded in 1866 by African-American veterans of the American Civil War, it is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fun ...

. Her research interests include

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many a ...

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of '' graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conn ...

, and

matroid In combinatorics, a branch of mathematics, a matroid is a structure that abstracts and generalizes the notion of linear independence in vector spaces. There are many equivalent ways to define a matroid axiomatically, the most significant being ...

Early life and education

Carolyn Mahoney was born the sixth of thirteen children in 1946 in

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mo ...

to Stephen and Myrtle Boone. Her grandmother cared for the children while her mother worked. Mahoney attended Catholic schools, where she was encouraged in her interest in mathematics by the nuns. As a teenager, Mahoney's parents separated due to her father's drinking and gambling and the family was forced to move to a lower-class neighborhood. Mahoney and her siblings were known for being smart in their neighborhood. She graduated from Father Bertrand High School in 1964. Mahoney attended Mount St. Scholastica College, a Catholic, all-female college in Kansas for three years before finishing her degree in mathematics at

Siena College Siena College is an American private Franciscan college in Loudonville, New York. Siena was founded by the Order of Friars Minor in 1937. The college was named after Bernardino of Siena, a 15th-century Italian Franciscan friar and preacher. S ...

in 1970. She then earned her master's degree in mathematics in 1972 and a doctorate in 1983, both from

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best pub ...

. Her doctorate involved

theory and

enumerative combinatorics Enumerative combinatorics is an area of combinatorics that deals with the number of ways that certain patterns can be formed. Two examples of this type of problem are counting combinations and counting permutations. More generally, given an infin ...

, and was supervised by Thomas Allan Dowling. She was the 25th black woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics in the U.S.Carolyn Mahoney
Ohio Women's Hall of Fame, retrieved 2015-02-21.

Career

After earning her doctorate, Mahoney taught first at

Denison University Denison University is a private liberal arts college in Granville, Ohio. One of the earliest colleges established in the former Northwest Territory, Denison University was founded in 1831. The college was first called the Granville Literary and ...

from 1984 to 1989, and Ohio State for two years. She also served on the test development committee for the

College Board The College Board is an American nonprofit organization that was formed in December 1899 as the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) to expand access to higher education. While the College Board is not an association of colleges, it runs a ...

from 1986 to 1989. In 1989, Mahoney was the first mathematician to be selected for the faculty at

California State University San Marcos California State University San Marcos (CSUSM or Cal State San Marcos) is a public university in San Marcos, California. It was founded in 1989 as the 21st campus in the 23-campus California State University (CSU) system. CSUSM offers 43 bach ...

, and was one of twelve founding faculty of the San Marcos campus.Carolyn Mahoney
Black Women in Mathematics, Scott W. Williams, State University of New York at Buffalo, retrieved 2015-02-15. In 1994 and 1995, Mahoney served as a program director at the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

, and she later worked as an administrator at

Elizabeth City State University Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) is a public historically black university in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. It enrolls nearly 2,500 students in 28 undergraduate programs and 4 graduate programs and is a member-school of the Thurgood Ma ...

North Carolina North Carolina () is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 28th largest and List of states and territories of the United ...

. In 2005, Mahoney was named president of

. She retired in 2012.

Contributions

Mahoney's research has focused largely on open problems in graph theory and combinatorics. As well as her thesis work on matroids, she has also published research on the

Hadwiger–Nelson problem In geometric graph theory, the Hadwiger–Nelson problem, named after Hugo Hadwiger and Edward Nelson, asks for the minimum number of colors required to color the plane such that no two points at distance 1 from each other have the same color. ...

concerning the

chromatic number In graph theory, graph coloring is a special case of graph labeling; it is an assignment of labels traditionally called "colors" to elements of a graph subject to certain constraints. In its simplest form, it is a way of coloring the vertices ...

unit distance graph In mathematics, particularly geometric graph theory, a unit distance graph is a graph formed from a collection of points in the Euclidean plane by connecting two points whenever the distance between them is exactly one. To distinguish these grap ...

s. She believes that she has had a hard time finding collaborators due to the fact that she is a Black female in mathematics. She is also a proponent of educational reform, especially supporting cultural diversity in university faculty. She believes that through the efforts of organizations such as the

Mathematical Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure a ...

and the

Association for Women in Mathematics The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a professional society whose mission is to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment o ...

the environment for women in mathematics has improved.

Awards and honors

In 1989, Mahoney was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame. A scholarship at CSU San Marcos and a walking trail at Lincoln University have been named in her honor. Mahoney was also recognized by

Mathematically Gifted & Black Mathematically Gifted & Black (MGB) is a website that features the accomplishments of black scholars in mathematical sciences. In addition to highlighting the work and lives of established mathematicians in the African Diaspora, the platform aims ...

as a Black History Month 2018 Honoree.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mahoney, Carolyn 1946 births Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians African-American mathematicians Ohio State University Graduate School alumni California State University San Marcos faculty Elizabeth City State University faculty Presidents of Lincoln University (Missouri) Graph theorists Mathematicians from Tennessee 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians African-American academics Women heads of universities and colleges American academic administrators African-American educators 20th-century African-American women 20th-century African-American people 21st-century American women 21st-century African-American women 21st-century African-American people