Elbert Frank Cox

Elbert Frank Cox (5 December 1895 – 28 November 1969) was an American mathematician. He was the first African American to receive a PhD in mathematics, which he earned at Cornell University in 1925.

Early life Cox was born in Evansville, Indiana to Johnson D. Cox, a Kentucky-born teacher active in the church, and Eugenia Talbot Cox. He grew up with his parents, maternal grandmother and his brother in a racially mixed neighborhood; in 1900, in his block, there were three Black and five white families.

Cox was offered a scholarship to study violin at the Prague Conservatory of Music, but chose to pursue his interest in mathematics instead.

Education Indiana University Cox studied at Indiana University Bloomington. Besides mathematics, Cox also took courses in German, English, Latin, history, hygiene, chemistry, education, philosophy and physics. Cox's brother Avalon went to Indiana University as well. There were three other Black students in his class. He received his bachelor's degree in 1917, at a time when the transcript of every Black student had the word "" printed across it. He received A's on all his exams while at Indiana.

Cornell University In December 1921, he applied for a graduate scholarship at Cornell University, one of seven American universities with a doctoral program in mathematics. One of his references wrote a positive letter followed by another letter anticipating difficulties for him because he was a "colored man". Cox was approved May 5, 1922, and enrolled in the autumn of the same year.

Important to him at Cornell was a young instructor, William Lloyd Garrison Williams, a co-founder of the Canadian Mathematical Congress who became chair of Cox's "special committee" in March 1923, and was his supervisor. Cox received the Erastus Brooks fellowship in Mathematics ($400 per year) in autumn 1924 and followed Williams to McGill University in Montreal. He moved back to Cornell in the spring semester of 1925, and finished his dissertation, The polynomial solutions of the difference equation af(x+1) + bf(x) = φ(x), in the summer of the same year. On September 26, 1925, he received his Ph.D. He was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics, and most likely the first black man in the world to do so. He did not publish a paper until 1934.

While Cox was active at Cornell, the Ku Klux Klan was active in the area. commemorating his pioneering achievement.

Family Elbert and Beulah Cox had four children.