Margaret B. Cole

Margaret Buchanan Cole (August 18, 1885 – September 10, 1959) was an American mathematician and was one of the few women to achieve a PhD in mathematics before World War II. She retired from West Virginia University as a professor emeritus in 1955.

In 1906, she graduated with her bachelor's degree from WVU in 1906 and started teaching math at Marshall College in Huntington, West Virginia. She returned to WVU in 1907 as a graduate student and taught math there 1909–1912. She enrolled at Bryn Mawr College as a graduate student in 1918 and was awarded a President M. Carey Thomas European fellowship in 1918–1919 but she postponed that award for a year until she could combine it with another fellowship she received from the Association of Collegiate Alumnae European fellowship in 1920–1921. The awards allowed her to attend the Sorbonne in Paris where she studied under Édouard Goursat, Henri Lebesgue, and Émile Picard in mathematics and under Marie Curie and Gabriel Lippmann in physics.

PhD in hand, she returned to teach at West Virginia University as assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 1925. On February 14, 1929 she resigned her position and married an old acquaintance, Harry Outen Cole, a widowed engineer who played a role in the design of the Panama Canal.

In 1938, using her new name Margaret Buchanan Cole, she rejoined the WVU faculty and held several positions: instructor 1938–1941, assistant professor 1941–1952 and associate professor 1952–1955. With her retirement in 1955 at age 69 she was promoted to professor emeritus. Cole was an active alumna of the university and became the first woman president of the WVU alumni association in June 1939 after serving four years on the alumni executive council. It was last awarded in 2015.