Rachel Blodgett Adams

Rachel Blodgett Adams (October 13, 1894–January 22, 1982) was a pioneering American mathematician and one of the first women to earn a doctorate in mathematics at Radcliffe College in 1921.

Biography Rachel Blodgett was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, the oldest of three children of Mabel Edith Owen and William Edward Blodgett, neither of whom attended college.

After graduating from Woburn High School in 1912, she entered Wellesley College and majored in mathematics and Latin. In addition to her studies, she joined the school's Shakespeare Society and performed cornet in the symphony orchestra. Academically, she was gifted and was named a Wellesley scholar in 1914 and a Durant scholar in 1915. The following fall term, Dr. Blodgett took a teaching position at Wellesley.

Rachel Blodgett married Harvard-trained mathematician Clarence Raymond Adams (1898–1965) on August 17, 1922, in Eden Park, in Providence, Rhode Island. (He was widely known as "C.R. Adams.") At the time, C. R. Adams was a Sheldon traveling fellow from Harvard, which allowed the newly married couple to travel extensively overseas with stops in Rome and Göttingen, Germany. Upon their return to the U.S. in 1923, the two mathematicians settled down in Providence, Rhode Island, where C. R. established his career at Brown University and eventually headed the math department there.

Later years During their marriage, Rachel and C. R. Adams traveled extensively by automobile in the United States and Europe. The couple never had children. He died in 1965 at the age of 67.

Legacy In her estate plans, Rachel bequeathed to Wellesley College the Blodgett Fund, and stipulated that the fund's income be used for scholarships. Sigma Xi American Mathematical Society Mathematical Association of America

Selected publications

Blodgett, Rachel E. "Utilizing Industrial Ash to Stabilize Arsenic in Soil Contaminated From Chromated Copper Arsenate(CCA) Treated Wood." Masters Abstracts International. Vol. 50. No. 03. 2011. Blodgett, Rachel. The Determination of the Coefficients in Interpolation Formulae: And A Study of the Approximate Solution of Integral Equations. Dissertation, Radcliffe College, 1921. Adams, Rachel Blodgett (1929). On the Approximate Solution of Fredholm's Homogeneous Integral Equation. American Journal of Mathematics. 51(1): 139–148. doi:10.2307/2370568. ISSN 0002-9327.