Falconer, Etta Zuber

Etta Zuber Falconer, née Etta Zuber, (born Nov. 21, 1933, Tupelo, Miss., U.S.—died Sept. 19, 2002, Atlanta, Ga.), American educator and mathematician who influenced many African American women to choose careers in science and mathematics.

Zuber graduated summa cum laude from Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., in 1953 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. Among her teachers at Fisk was mathematician Evelyn Granville, one of the first African American women to receive a doctoral degree in mathematics. Zuber then received a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. From 1954 to 1963 she taught at Okolona Junior College in Mississippi, marrying basketball coach Dolan Falconer the year she began there.

Falconer taught at Howard High School in Chattanooga, Tenn., from 1963 to 1964, and the following year she studied at the National Science Foundation Teacher Training Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1965 she took the post of instructor and then assistant professor in the mathematics department at Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga. In 1969 she received a doctoral degree in mathematics at Emory University, Atlanta, for a thesis on quasigroups, which are sets of elements that are closed under multiplication but do not have to fulfill any of the other requirements for being a group. In 1971 she became an assistant professor of mathematics at Norfolk State University in Virginia. She returned to Spelman the next year and became chair of the mathematics department. In 1982 she earned a master’s degree in computer science from Atlanta University, and that same year she became chair of Spelman’s division of natural sciences, a post she held until 1990. From 1991 until her retirement in 2002, she was associate provost for science programs and policy.

Falconer dedicated her career at Spelman, a historically black college for women, to increasing the number of African American women in mathematics and the sciences. Over the course of Falconer’s tenure, the number of women majoring in science, mathematics, or engineering tripled to nearly 40 percent of the student body. Spelman added departments in chemistry and computer science, as well as a major in biochemistry. A new building was constructed to house the division of natural sciences, and Spelman received $9 million from the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to be a Model Institution for Excellence.