Academy Honors Three During African American History Month

EVELYN BOYD GRANVILLE is a mathematician who has divided her career between mathematics and computer programming, primarily in the U. S. space program, and teaching. Dr. Granville graduated from Dunbar High School, a segregated high school in Washington, D. C. that had gained the reputation for the quality of its educational program. Dr. Granville then attended Smith College, graduating in 1945 summa cum laude with honors in mathematics, and Yale University, where she received an M.A (1946) and Ph.D. (1949). Years later she learned that her Ph.D. from Yale was the first doctoral degree in mathematics received by a Black woman in the United States.

After spending a year as a research assistant at New York University, Dr. Granville taught for two years at Fisk University in Nashville and then returned to Washington, D.C. to work on mathematical analysis of problems related to missile fuses for what later would become the Diamond Ordnance Fuse Laboratories of the Department of the Army. In 1956, Dr. Granville joined IBM Corporation where she was introduced to computer technology and programming. At IBM she was part of a team of mathematicians and scientists responsible for the formulation of orbit computations and computer procedures, first for NASA's project Vanguard and later for Project Mercury. After moving to California in 1960, she held positions at Space Technology Laboratories and North American Aviation, specializing in orbital computations and digital computer techniques in support of NASA space projects. She later rejoined IBM as a mathematician in the company's Federal Systems Division. In 1967, Dr. Granville returned to academia, joining the faculty at California State University, Los Angeles. In addition to courses in computer programming and numerical analysis, she taught a mathematics course for prospective elementary school teachers. Dr. Granville later co-authored a college textbook on the teaching of mathematics. After teaching for 17 years in Los Angeles, Dr. Granville moved to East Texas in 1984 with the intent of retiring. Instead, she spent 3 ? years as a professor of mathematics and computer science at Texas College, a historically Black college in Tyler, Texas. In 1990, she was appointed to the Sam A. Lindsey Chair at the University of Texas at Tyler and served there as a visiting professor of mathematics until her retirement in 1997. She remains active in the field of education through visits to schools to encourage the study of mathematics and presentation of workshops to strengthen the teaching of mathematics.


BEATRIX A. HAMBURG is a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Psychiatry of the Cornel University College of Medicine. She has had a long career in academic medicine. She is the immediate past President of the William T. Grant Foundation. Prior to that she was Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Her other professional appointments were at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Harvard Medical School in their respective departments of Psychiatry. At both Stanford and Mount Sinai School of Medicine she was the director of the Division of Child Psychiatry. Dr. Hamburg received her B.A. from Vassar College and her M.D. from the Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Hamburg is a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), a honor that has also been bestowed on her husband, David A. Hamburg, and their daughter Margaret A. Hamburg. This is the first family to ever have three members elected to the IOM. Dr. Hamburg has participated in many activities sponsored by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council, including the Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, the Board on Behavioral Sciences and Mental Disorders, and the Standing Committee for Bio-Behavioral Sciences and Mental Disorders. Dr. Hamburg has served on the boards of the Bush Foundation, the Revson foundation, and the Greenwall Foundation. She has been a member of the Committee on Successful Adolescence of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Council on Adolescence. In New York State, Dr. Hamburg has served on the Public Health Council of the Governor's Task Force on Life and Law, and the New York State Council on Graduate Medical Education, and she chaired the Committee on Minority Education. Dr. Hamburg is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Society of Medicine, and she is a member of numerous other professional societies, including the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Society for Adolescent Research, the Society for Research in Child Development, the American Public Health Association, and the Society for Adolescent Medicine. Dr. Hamburg's research has been in normal adolescent, adolescent psychopathology, and endocrine-behavior interactions. She is most noted for her pioneering work on peer counseling, studies of diabetic children and adolescents, and studies of the health and mental health status of minority populations. Earlier this year she co-edited a book on "Violence in American Schools." Dr. Hamburg has receive many honors and awards, including the Brownell Prize, the T. Ross Gallagher Award from the Society of Adolescent Medicine, the Administrator's Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration, and an honorary degree from Northwestern University.


RUBY PURYEAR HEARN is Sr. Vice President of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest health care philanthropy in the United States. The Foundation has awarded over two billion dollars in grant funds since its inception as a national philanthropy in 1972. As a member of the executive management team, Dr. Hearn participates in strategic program planning with the president and executive vice president and serves as a special advisor to the president and as the Foundation's liaison within the non-profit community. Dr. Hearn has had the major responsibility for oversight and program development of initiatives in maternal, infant and child health, AIDS, substance abuse and minority medical education. Dr. Hearn received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in biophysics from Yale University and is a graduate of Skidmore College. She was a Fellow of the Yale Corporation and has served on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors for the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Connecticut, the Science Board for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the governing Council of the Institute of Medicine, the Board of Directors of the Council on Foundations, and the Advisory Committee to the Director, National Institutes of Health. Dr. Hearn is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP), the National Advisory Child Health and Human Development Council, the National Institute of Health, the President's Drug Free Communities Act Advisory Commission, and the Goucher College Board of Trustees.