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Alice T. Schafer In 1962, when Schafer began teaching at Wellesley College, women in mathematics were unusual creatures. Students were reluctant to tell boys that they were mathematics majors. One said to her, "I did not tell him that I was a mathematics major, for I did not want to frighten him away." "At about the same time," Schafer continued, "a male colleague suggested that we take a picture of the students who usually sat in the front row of an advanced class of mine for, he said, five of them were beautiful blondes. He thought that we ought to publicize their picture in the mathematical community to show that women, and beautiful ones, can do mathematics." Alice Turner was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1915. She received a B.A. from the University of Richmond in 1936. After teaching mathematics in high school for three years, Alice went to the University of Chicago. There she met, and in 1942 married another graduate student studying mathematics, Richard Schafer. Alice received both an M.A. and Ph.D. from Chicago. Her dissertation, "Singularities of Space Curves," was in projective differential geometry. In those days colleges and universities tended not to hire women to teach mathematics. Alice Schafer taught at a number of places – Swarthmore, University of Michigan, Douglass College, Drexel Institute of Technology, University of Connecticut, and at Connecticut College (twice) – before coming to Wellesley College in 1962. She was named Helen Day Gould Professor of Mathematics at Wellesley in 1969.
In addition to combating mathematics anxiety, Schafer and others worked to improve the position of women in the profession. She worked with Linda Rothschild, a graduate student at MIT, and Bhama Srinivasan, a professor at Clark Univeristy, to organize a support group for women mathematicians. She was part of a groundbreaking women's caucus that founded the Association for Women in Mathematics in 1971 "to encourage women to study mathematics, to create a network of professionals in mathematics and related careers, and to promote equal opportunity and treatment in the mathematical community." Alice Schafer served as the second president of AWM and helped put it on a firm footing. She also convinced Wellesley to provide office space for the fledgling organization during its formative years. AWM established the Alice T. Schafer Mathematics Prize in her honor. Since 1990 the Schafer Prize has been awarded annually to an undergraduate woman for excellence in mathematics. Alice Schafer retired from teaching – the first time – in 1980. She stayed at Wellesley for two years, serving as chairman of Wellesley's new Affirmative Action Program. But she found it hard to stay away from teaching. In the 1980s she taught at Simmons College and in management seminars at Radcliffe College. When her husband retired from MIT in 1988, they moved to Arlington, Virginia. For the next seven years Alice taught mathematics at Marymount University. In 1985 Alice Schafer was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She continued to publish and served as referee for The College Mathematics Journal. Under the auspices of the People to People Ambassador Program, Schafer traveled to China three times to consult with women mathematicians. The Schafers currently reside in Lexington, Massachusetts. Alice is involved with a committee that sponsors the Somerville Mathematics Fund. This group offers college scholarships to residents of Somerville, Massachusetts, and grants to Somerville teachers to improve mathematics instruction. Written by Wilma Slaight
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Alice
T. Schafer is best known for her efforts to encourage girls and
women to learn mathematics. In 1998 the Mathematical Association
of America honored her efforts by presenting Schafer the 
One
of Alice Schafer's innovations at Wellesley was an experimental
program, developed in 1976, to help students overcome their fear
of mathematics. Increasingly, mathematics majors no longer were
headed primarily for jobs stressing the physical sciences, since
strong quantitative skills were an asset in business, economics,
social sciences, and the emerging field of computer science. Schafer
developed a special mathematics course that targeted two kinds of
students: those who had difficulties with mathematics, and those
who felt they did not understand mathematics and therefore avoided
it. The course utilized student tutors, a mathematics lab, lectures
by women mathematicians, and materials that stressed the applications
of mathematics to the humanities – all designed to reduce mathematics
anxiety and increase students' interest in mathematics.
