Dorothy Walcott Weeks

Dorothy Walcott Weeks (May 3, 1893 – June 4, 1990) was an American mathematician and physicist. Weeks was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She earned degrees from Wellesley College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Simmons College. Weeks was the first woman to receive a PhD in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Early life Dorothy Walcott Weeks was born on May 3, 1893, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Mary (nee Walcott) and Edward Mitchell Weeks, an engraver. Weeks was the second of three children, born after her older brother and before her younger sister Ruth. Dorothy's older brother was heavily involved in math and science. After graduation, Weeks went on to work as a teacher, a statistical clerk, and an assistant at the National Bureau of Standards. In 1917 she became the third woman to work as a patent examiner at the US Patent Office.

Retirement and Late Life Dorothy Walcott Weeks retired from Wilson College in 1956. Both of these organizations campaigned for the acceptance, inclusion, and promotion of women in academia. She wrote several articles, including a piece about the struggles of women in the science fields, which was published in Physics Today in 1960. A collection of Weeks' written works, including a personal memoir written during retirement, is currently held at MIT. Weeks died in Newton, Massachusetts in 1990 at the age of ninety-seven.

Publications

Dorothy W. Weeks, "Three Mathematical Methods of Analyzing Polarized Light," Journal of Mathematics and Physics, Volume 13, Issue 4, (December 1934): 371-379. Dorothy W. Weeks, "A study of sixteen coherency matrices," Journal of Mathematics and Physics, Volume 13, Issue 4, (December 1934): 380-386. Henry Norris Russell, Charlotte E. Moore, and Dorothy W. Weeks, "The Arc Spectrum of Iron (Fe 1)," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, (1944). Dorothy W. Weeks, "Central Pennsylvania Section," American Journal of Physics, Volume 22, Number 3 (March 1954): 148-151. Dorothy W. Weeks, "Central Pennsylvania Section," American Journal of Physics, Volume 22, Number 6 (September 1954): 424-426. Dorothy W. Weeks, "Women in Physics Today," Physics Today, Volume 13, Issue 8, (1960): 22-23. Dorothy W. Weeks, "Absorption Spectrum of Fe I in the Vacuum Ultraviolet," Astronomical Journal, Volume 70 (1965): 696. Dorothy W. Weeks, "Women in Physics," Physics Today, Volume 40, Issue 6 (1987): 15.