News Releases
7/13/05
When Joan Kirkham, c’48, entered the post-World War II workforce, she made it clear she was there as a mathematician and would not wait on the men in the office.
“They asked me to make the coffee for them only once,” she laughed. “I made it so strong they never asked again.”
Once a rarity among her classmates, Kirkham is now encouraging more women to excel in mathematics at KU. Through a gift to the Kansas University Endowment Association, the Lawrence resident has established a scholarship in her name for female students in the Department of Mathematics. Additionally, she has established an unrestricted fund for mathematics and committed substantial support for mathematics through her estate plans. She also has given her books, papers and other materials –“The Joan Kirkham Collection of Textbooks, Tools and Toys,” as she calls them – to the department.
“Joan Kirkham is a terrific lady,” said Jack Porter, chair of the department. “She’s giving us the resources to encourage talented women to enroll in math classes and excel in them. Her unrestricted support for the department is of critical importance. Unrestricted gifts help us pursue opportunities such as visits from outstanding visiting professors and help us support graduate students’ research.”
Kirkham studied mathematics under KU professors Wealthy Babcock, Florence Black, G. Baley Price and Ellis B. Stouffer, among others. Kirkham said Babcock hired her to work in the Mathematics Library and taught her in projective geometry class.
“I remember that I never ceased to marvel at the fact that we could prove all those analytic geometry theorems without using any algebra – just by drawing flat pencils and bundles and things using only a straightedge and a compass,” Kirkham said of Babcock’s geometry class.
Kirkham earned a master’s degree in mathematics at the University of Denver in 1960. Her career as a mathematician has included work at the Denver Research Institute, an entity of the University of Denver, and McDonnell Automation in St. Louis. In 1967, she started working in support of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD. Among her duties for NORAD, Kirkham helped keep track of the space catalog of all reflective objects, including satellites and debris. She retired in 1987.
Kirkham has been active in parliamentary education through the Colorado Association of Parliamentarians, where she served as president from 1988 until 1990. A division of the National Association of Parliamentarians, the organization furthers proficiency and interest in parliamentary procedure.
Her gifts for KU will be managed by KU Endowment, an independent, non-profit organization serving as the official fund-raising and fund-management organization for the University of Kansas. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment is the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university and one of the largest.
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