Alice M. Dimick

Alice M. Dimick (1878–1956) (née McKelden), was an American mathematician and one of the few women in the United States to earn a doctorate in mathematics before World War II. After taking a competitive examination, she won a four-year scholarship to Columbian University (now called George Washington University) where she graduated in 1899 with awards in mathematics and Greek. That same year, she enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to study mathematics. During that 1899 school year, she took seven courses in mathematics, six in Greek, and one in classical philology, and she passed written examinations in Greek, modern analytical geometry, and complex variables before receiving her master's degree in 1900. During the summer session of 1901, McKelden studied at Harvard followed the next year with enrollment at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, although her coursework there remains unknown. In 1902–1903 and 1903–1904, McKelden completed two fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania and finished her PhD studies there in 1905 submitting a dissertation that described the theory of finite groups, supervised by George Hervey Hallett Sr. Like many other women who had earned doctorates at that time, McKelden's advanced degree merely qualified her to become a secondary school teacher in at least one preparatory school and at the Philadelphia High School for Girls. on the academy's campus is named for him.

Alice Dimick died July 13, 1956, in Tryon, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. with her husband, Chester Dimick USCG (retired), who had died only six months before.