Thyrsa Frazier Svager

Frazier Svager was born Thyrsa Anne Frazier on June 16, 1930 in Wilberforce, Ohio.[2] Her mother, Elizabeth Anne Frazier, taught speech at Central State University (CSU), a historically black university in Wilberforce, Ohio.[3] Her father, G. Thurston Frazier, headed the Logistics Department at the Wright–Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.[3] He was a member of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, holding the position of Polemarch in the province.[3][7] Frazier Svager had three sisters, Gail, Constance and Jane, and a brother, William Lafayette.[3][2]

Frazier Svager graduated from Wilberforce University Preparatory Academy in Ohio at the age of 16 in 1947, as class valedictorian.[2][8] She attended Antioch College, a private liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, majoring in mathematics, with a minor in chemistry, and placed in the 99th percentile in the Princeton Senior Student Examination.[9] Frazier Svager was one of only four black students at Antioch: one of the others was Coretta Scott King, with whom she was friends.[8]

She gained a bachelor of arts degree from Antioch in 1951, going on to gain a master's (1952) and PhD from Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus in 1965, where Paul Reichelderfer was her doctoral advisor.[10][11] Her dissertation was titled "On the product of absolutely continuous transformations of measure spaces".[12]

Frazier Svager worked for a year at Wright–Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, before teaching at Texas Southern University in Houston.[10] In 1954, she joined the faculty of CSU in Wilberforce.[10]

In 1967, Frazier Svager was appointed chairman of the department of mathematics.[13] She was awarded tenure in 1970.[14][10] She spent a summer in DC in 1966 as a systems analyst at NASA, as visiting faculty at MIT in 1969, and in 1985, she undertook postdoctoral study at OSU during the summer.[2] She was provost and vice president for academic affairs when she retired in 1993.[8][2] In March 1995, she returned for a short time to CSU as Interim President.[2]

Frazier Svager was active on the issue of scholarships, serving as the president of the local chapter of MOLES, a national association that provided scholarships for college students.[15] She was also a member of Beta Kappa Chi, the National Association of Mathematicians, and the Mathematical Association of America, and was involved with Jack and Jill of America.[15][2] Frazier Svager participated in the meeting that founded the National Association of Mathematics in 1969.[2]

She wrote two books, CSU's Modern Elementary Algebra Workbook (1969),[16] and Essential Mathematics for College Freshmen (1976).[17]

While on the CSU faculty, Frazier met Aleksandar Svager, a Holocaust survivor from Yugoslavia and physics professor at CSU.[4][5] They married in June 1968 at her parents' home.[18]

Thyrsa Frazier Svager died on July 23, 1999.[19]

Both university professors with a strong commitment to furthering education opportunities, the Svagers lived on one income, investing the other to build a scholarship fund.[5] After her death, her husband established the Thyrsa Frazier Svager Fund at the Dayton Foundation, for African-American women who major in mathematics at one of six universities, with a legacy contribution planned.[6][5] As of February 2017, 33 women had received support from the Fund.[5] An annual contribution is also being made to the American Physical Society's Minority Scholarship.[4]

Frazier Svager was honored with an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by CSU on her retirement, and she was inducted into the Hall of Fame in Greene County, Ohio.[2]

• Thyrsa Frazier Svager at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Tribute to Thyrsa Frazier Svager on YouTube (Dayton Foundation).
• Thyrsa Frazier Svager Scholarship Fund.
• Thyrsa Frazier Svager at Find a Grave