Cleota Gage Fry

Cleota Gage Fry (December 30, 1910 – July 1, 2001) was an American mathematician, physicist and university professor. She was one of the few women to earn a PhD in mathematics before World War II and was only the second person at Purdue to earn a doctorate in mathematics.

Biography Fry was born December 30, 1910 in Shoshone, Idaho and was the oldest of four children of Coral Gage and Holmes L. Fry. She attended elementary school in Portland, Oregon, and graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1929. She borrowed funding from a lawyer friend to attend Reed College and graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics in 1933 with an undergraduate thesis titled, Analysis of Textile Fibers and Fabrics. Her PhD in 1939 was only the second one awarded in mathematics by Purdue.

Memberships According to Green, Fry was active in several organizations. American Mathematical Society Mathematical Association of America American Physical Society Sigma Xi

Selected publications 1942 with H. K. Hughes. Asymptotic developments of certain integral functions. Duke Math. J. 9. 1952: with W. L. Ayres; H. F. S. Jonah: General College Mathematics. New York, Toronto, and London: McGraw-Hill Book Co. 1943: with H. K. Hughes. Asymptotic developments of certain integral functions. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 49:45 #33. Presented by title to cancelled meeting of the AMS, New York City, 27–28 Dec 1942. 1946: with H. K. Hughes: Asymptotic developments of types of generalized Bessel functions. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 52:818 #297. Presented by H. K. Hughes to the AMS, Ithaca, New York, 22 Aug 1946.