Black Mathematicians, Other Scientists Find Community At UB Web Site

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Even in 2000, African-Americans who are studying to be -- or already are -- mathematicians face a lonely proposition: only about one-quarter of 1 percent of all mathematicians in the United States are black.

But many of them are finding a thriving community at the unique Web site, Mathematicians of the African Diaspora (MAD) http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/mad0.html, created and maintained by Scott Williams, Ph.D., professor of mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Buffalo.

Since its debut in 1997, the site has had more than 200,000 hits.

Williams developed the site after finding that another Internet site dedicated to African-American scientists had plenty of listings under the life sciences and engineering, but few mathematicians.

"They had two," he recalled.

Williams wrote to the site creators, pointing out that he personally knew of more than 40 African or African-American mathematicians, but when they simply added his name to the list, he decided to start his own site.

The response has been overwhelming. Williams had to obtain a dedicated mailbox just to deal with the messages generated by the site.

"On a busy week, I can receive between 20 and 50 messages from students, and that doesn't include the ones I get from their teachers," he said.

The site focuses primarily on black mathematicians with doctorates, although he has recently added sections on black physicists and computer scientists. Other sections include a time line of significant dates, a listing of black research mathematicians, profiles of black mathematicians -- about 300 so far -- and black mathematicians outside of North America and in ancient Africa.

Also included are articles about famous or instrumental black mathematicians. Examples include David Blackwell, the first African-American named to the National Academy of Sciences (1965) and still the only black mathematician in the NAS; Benjamin Banneker, appointed by President George Washington to a three-person team to survey the future District of Columbia, working closely with Pierre L'Enfant; ex-slave Thomas Fuller, and Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Fallani al-Kishnawi, an African mathematician born in the early 18th century in what is now Nigeria.

Some profiles describe in detail the struggles mathematicians, both deceased and living, have had to endure to obtain their doctorates. For example, Vivienne Malone Mayes (1932-1995) in 1966 became the first black faculty member at Baylor University, an institution that had explicitly rejected her as a student only five years earlier with a letter that spelled out its segregation policy. (She earned her doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin.)

Williams' research for the site has turned up some intriguing and little-known facts, he said.

For one thing, 25 percent of black mathematicians are women.

Williams also has uncovered evidence that suggests that while black mathematicians make up a tiny minority in the field, they are publishing far more than their share of research in the field.

"There have been estimates that about 1 percent of all math Ph.D.s in the U.S. publish more than five papers in their lifetime," he said. "Now, less than 1 percent of all mathematicians are black, but it turns out that a high percentage of them, around 15 percent, publish mathematics research."

According to Williams, that was an easy computation to make, since of the several thousand new doctorates granted world-wide in mathematics -- approximately 1,500 in the U.S. -- roughly 20 -- a dozen in the U.S. -- are earned by blacks.

The site also features sections on new doctorates in the field, scholarships and stipends, and articles on black mathematicians. It also highlights the institutions that have granted the highest numbers of doctorates to black mathematicians: the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Howard University and the University of California at Berkeley.

The sole criterion for a listing or profile on Williams' site is that someone earned a doctorate in the field, although he acknowledged that many mathematicians actively engaged in the field never earned a doctorate.

"I am interested in those who have Ph.D.s," he said. "To me, research is at the forefront and I'm interested in pushing that aspect, especially to young people."