Winifred Edgerton Merrill

Winifred Edgerton (September 24, 1862 – September 6, 1951) was born in Ripon, Wisconsin. She was the first woman to receive a degree from Columbia University and the first American woman to receive a PhD in mathematics. She was awarded a PhD with high honors from Columbia University in 1886, by a unanimous vote of the board of trustees, after being rejected once. Her teachers included Professor John Krom Rees, Professor J. Howard Van Amringe and Professor William Guy Peck. After her first appeal to receive a degree was rejected by the trustees, she was advised by President Frederick A. P. Barnard to speak to each of the trustees individually. At the next meeting, she was awarded the PhD with high honors from Columbia University in 1886, by a unanimous vote. Her thesis was "Multiple Integrals and Their Geometrical Interpretation of Cartesian Geometry, in Trilinears and Triplanars, in Tangentials, in Quaternions, and in Modern Geometry; Their Analytical Interpretations in the Theory of Equations, Using Determinants, Invariants and Covariants as Instruments in the Investigation".

She published and spoke on education and was a trustee of Wellesley College. Later in life (1948–1951), Winifred worked as a librarian at the Barbizon Hotel in New York City.

On the fiftieth anniversary of her graduation from Wellesley, a portrait of Winifred Edgerton Merrill was presented to Columbia and now hangs in one of the academic buildings with the inscription, "She opened the door."