Black Mathematicians, Still a Rarity, See Light at the End of the Pipeline

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By CAROLYN MOONEY

Emery N. Brown, Dennis Davenport, George F. Edmonds, and Elaine C. Smith were academic rarities when they earned their doctorates almost 20 years ago: They were the only black Americans known to have earned a Ph.D. in mathematics during the 1987-88 academic year.

At the time, colleges and universities across the country spoke in frenzied terms about the urgent need to recruit more minority professors. But in many fields, there were nowhere near enough minority scholars in the pipeline to match the rhetoric. If you wanted to hire a black American with a newly minted Ph.D. in math, that year's statistics melted into four faces, whose story was featured on the front page of The Chronicle on August 2, 1989.

The number and proportion of minority scholars earning doctorates has grown steadily since then, but black math scholars (and other minority mathematicians) are still relatively rare. In the 2004-5 academic year, 14 black Americans earned Ph.D.'s awarded by math departments, according to the latest survey conducted annually by the American Mathematical Society for several math groups.

What is it about mathematics? Why hasn't there been more progress? The struggle to increase the number of black math scholars is an equation with many variables. The scholars who got their doctorates back in 1987-88 have an inside view of the problem — and some thoughts about the solution. One of them, Mr. Edmonds, who earned his Ph.D. late in his career, had retired from Elizabeth City State University and could not be located by The Chronicle. But the other three are deep into their careers — conducting research, racking up citations, and serving as mentors to students who may eventually become mathematicians themselves.

All three agree that in mathematics, more so than in many disciplines, preparation must begin long before college. Miss a key course, and it's hard to catch up.

Ms. Smith, who earned her Ph.D. from American University, taught undergraduates before joining the Washington, D.C., school system. She is now chairman of Woodrow Wilson High School's math department. "I've found it much more rewarding and enriching," she says. At the college level, she says, "I was reaching them too late."

Ms. Smith, who has consulted for the College Board's AP calculus test, helped organize a summer math-enrichment program at Wilson that covers a full year of math in six weeks. More than half of Wilson's student body is black, but the students who take AP calculus are mostly white, she says. "I can't stand that,'' she says. "I've got a banner on my wall saying 'AP is not for the elite, but for the prepared.'

"Part of it is, we have students who don't want to do the work. They don't see students who look like them sitting in those classrooms. But the benefits are worth the struggles."

Dr. Brown, who earned both a math doctorate and an M.D. from Harvard University within a year, would certainly agree. He is a practicing anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, doing research on how drugs act on the brain to induce a state of anesthesia. He teaches at Harvard Medical School and holds faculty appointments in computational neuroscience and health sciences in the Division of Health Sciences and Technology, a joint program of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.

Black youngsters need more diverse role models, Dr. Brown says. "The obvious ones are the Michael Jordans and the rap stars" — who, by the way, work extremely hard, he says. "But we need to help young people redefine their goals so they are more realistic, and to make the case that math is fun and exciting and attainable." That might mean encouraging a youngster to think: "I should do more math because I could be successful as a mathematician or accountant."

Dr. Brown has enjoyed getting phone calls from school-age students doing reports on him for Black History Month. "For a lot of people, it would be helpful to know that somebody who came from Ocala, Fla., is now practicing medicine and doing math research," he says. "They might just say, 'Oh, wow, maybe I could do that.'"

Dr. Brown has several minority students in the pipeline who may become math scholars. There are more programs in place now to nurture minority scholars, he says, but they need to be better integrated to serve students at different stages of their careers. He is a mentor to undergraduates in MIT's summer-research program and encourages his own two children with their math. Growing up in rural Florida, Dr. Brown would often be given challenging math problems by his own father, a math teacher who was one of his son's earliest mentors. (Dr. Brown finished high school at an elite New England prep school.) But, he says, "A lot of the very successful mentoring of underrepresented minorities is being done by people who are not themselves underrepresented minorities, and it's important to acknowledge that."

That also works in reverse, as Mr. Davenport has found. He has spent most of his career at Miami University of Ohio since earning his doctorate, taking leaves to work at the National Science Foundation, the United States Military Academy, and, this fall, Howard University, where he received his Ph.D. Because Miami's black-student population is small, Mr. Davenport's perception of his role has changed over the years. "Now my role is to let majority students know that there are minority people who can think and do math," he says. Many of Miami's math majors may end up as schoolteachers, "and they won't think that a kid can't do math because of the color of his skin." Mr. Davenport still remembers the math teachers who were mentors to him in the eighth and ninth grades. But his brother did not have supportive teachers and struggled with math in school, he says.

Mr. Davenport hasn't given up on the Ph.D. pipeline. He founded a seven-week summer institute at Miami that gives undergraduates from various institutions — and particularly those from underrepresented groups — paid experience in research mathematics. Learning about the grant-making process during his NSF stint didn't hurt, since the foundation contributes a large share of the institute's budget. So does the National Security Agency, which encouraged him to develop the summer program.

At West Point, where cadets and faculty members work together to make sure students don't fall through the cracks, Mr. Davenport was impressed by the strong support system he saw. As a young scholar, he appreciated when senior mathematicians introduced him at scholarly meetings and helped him learn the ropes.

Mr. Davenport isn't surprised that there aren't more black mathematicians today. But with the percentage of American citizens earning math doctorates declining, he is concerned for the entire profession. "It's a national crisis that I don't think people are talking about," he says.

Of the 1,116 doctorates awarded by U.S. mathematics departments in 2004-5, 434 of them — or 39 percent — went to Americans, according to the math society's survey. Of those recipients, one was American Indian, 21 were Asian, 14 were black, 12 were Hispanic, and three were Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders. Women made up 28 percent of the Americans.

The math society's numbers tend to vary slightly — probably due to differences in reporting practices — from those collected in an annual survey of new doctorates that is sponsored by several federal agencies. In 2003-4, for example, the math society's survey reported that 12 black Americans earned doctorates, compared with eight in the Survey of Earned Doctorates, which is conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Whatever the exact figure, those numbers don't go far when you consider that there are more than 1,500 math or math-related departments at American institutions that would expect a new faculty member to have a Ph.D., says Jim Maxwell, an associate executive director of the math society. He believes some of the steps that have drawn more women to mathematics — offering more research opportunities at an earlier stage, for example, and seeking out students beyond the obvious ones who win the math awards — can also work for minority students.

And what about all those job offers that minority scholars supposedly get? Dr. Brown has received his share over the years, but he believes such offers have to do with his academic specialty, not his race. "All you may gain from the fact that you're an underrepresented minority is that your name may be considered," he says. After that, "all the usual factors come into play."

Ms. Smith and Mr. Davenport, on the other hand, believe their race was definitely a factor when they were recruited early in their careers. Mr. Davenport admits he was a hot commodity when he first received his Ph.D. At his discipline's annual meeting that year, he had 23 interviews in two days, applied for 16 jobs, and was invited to visit by eight campuses, he says.

Mr. Davenport chose Miami because it was a place where he could pursue his research interests — and because he was treated well when he was interviewed. Many small things added up during that first visit: He was met at the airport, introduced to a variety of colleagues, and always had someone to walk with as he strolled the campus. He has since learned that Miami treats all job candidates that way, he says.

The warm tone set early on helped Mr. Davenport adjust later, when small-town life wasn't always appealing to a black scholar. The area didn't cater to young, single men — let alone black men. "I almost left Miami after my first year," he recalls. "It was too homogenous. I couldn't find a church to go to, I couldn't get my hair cut." For a while he lived in Cincinnati, a more-urban environment, and that helped. So did time, experience, and an occasional leave.

In Ms. Smith's case, the job offers eventually slowed down, but they have been replaced by other rewards. She uses history and culture to engage her students. That might mean telling them that Pythagoras was educated in ancient Egypt, or discussing Muhammad Ali's fight statistics, or examining the geometric patterns in quilts made by African-American men. (That example allows her to make another valuable point — that men can sew.)

Ms. Smith will always remember being annoyed upon learning that a theorem she had studied was named for a black mathematician (David Blackwell, the first African-American to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences). Nobody had bothered to tell her he was black.

That wouldn't happen in her classroom.