Bird Margaret Turner

Bird Margaret Turner (April 18, 1877 – September 5, 1962) was an American mathematician and university professor from Moundsville, West Virginia. She was one of the relatively few American women who earned their PhDs in mathematics before World War II.

In 1893, she graduated from the local Moundsville High School and went to work right away as an elementary school teacher. In 1900, she was hired to teach mathematics at her alma mater, Moundsville High School. During summer breaks until 1914, she took advanced level mathematics courses at West Virginia University (WVU), although in the summer of 1906, she studied at Harvard University, and during the summer break in 1908, she briefly attended Bethany College in West Virginia.

After receiving her doctorate, she taught at the University of Illinois for three years before assuming the position of assistant professor of mathematics at West Virginia University. In 1925, she was named an associate professor and, in 1931, she was promoted to full professor. She taught at WVU for a total of 24 years before retiring from teaching in 1947 at the age of 70 as professor emeritus.

Four years later, she returned to Moundsville, where she made her last home. She died there on September 5, 1962, and was buried in the city's Mt. Rose Cemetery.

Memberships American Mathematical Society Mathematical Association of America (charter member) American Association for the Advancement or Science Phi Beta Kappa

Selected works Turner, Bird Margaret. "Plane cubics with a given quadrangle of inflexions." American Journal of Mathematics 44, no. 4 (1922): 261-278. Turner, Bird Margaret. "On the positions of the imaginary points of inflexion and critical centers of a real cubic," Annals of Mathematics, June 1922. Turner, Bird Margaret. "A configuration of thirteen pencils of cubics and cubics with three real inflexions. American Journal of Mathematics. 47:149-162. Reviews: JFM 51.0514.01 (W. Fr. Meyer); Rev. semestr. publ. math. 32, pt. 1: 2-3