Josephine Chanler

Josephine Hughes Chanler (7 April 1906 – 23 December 1992) was an American mathematician specializing in algebraic geometry.[1]

She was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She was the only child of Louisa Castle and James Chanler. Her parents separated soon after her birth, and she grew up with her mother, who lived in Bowling Green, Kentucky and worked as a schoolteacher. As a girl she became ill with polio, and had to undergo treatment for it at intervals later in her life. When she was a high school student, she and her mother moved to Jacksonville, Florida, but they moved back to Bowling Green so that Chanler could attend the Western Kentucky State Normal School and Teacher's College. She completed a degree there in 1927, and became a high school teacher.[1]

In 1929, Chanler and her mother moved again, to Illinois, so that Chanler could begin graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She earned a master's degree under the mentorship of Bessie Irving Miller, but Miller died soon afterward.[1] She completed her doctorate there in 1933.[2][3] Her dissertation, Poristic Double Binary Forms, was supervised by Arthur Byron Coble.[4]

Despite an offer to move to a college in New England, Chanler remained at Illinois for the rest of her career. She retired as an associate professor in 1971.[1]