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Mathematics has never existed in a vacuum. Behind every theorem, breakthrough, or mission to the moon, there are people, often working unnoticed, often against the odds, who shaped the field with their ideas and determination.
During Black History Month, we honor the African American mathematicians who made those contributions across time. From early pioneers who studied in segregated schools to contemporary scholars shaping the future of STEM, they pushed forward in spaces where they were often overlooked or unwelcome.
In this spotlight, we trace the impact of 10 influential African American mathematicians, each one building on the legacy of those before them, and each one opening doors for those yet to come.
Benjamin Banneker was never meant to become a scientist. Not in 18th-century Maryland, where Black children rarely had access to schools and where slavery still surrounded his free Black family. But from an early age, Banneker showed signs he wasn’t content with what society said he could be.
He taught himself to read, studied the natural world, and at age 21, he did something remarkable: after borrowing a pocket watch from a traveling merchant, he dismantled it, studied its inner workings, and used the design to build a strikingly accurate wooden clock. It kept time for over 20 years.
That curiosity only deepened.
As an adult, Banneker borrowed books on mathematics and astronomy from a local Quaker family and began charting the skies. He predicted a solar eclipse in 1789, then went on to publish a widely read almanac filled with astronomical data, weather forecasts, and farming advice.
He never set foot in a university. But he proved, line by line, what intellect could do, even when denied opportunity.
Charles Reason began teaching math when most kids his age were still memorizing their times tables.
Born in New York City in 1818 to free Haitian parents, he was reading by age four and tutoring by fourteen. His sharp mind caught the attention of local educators who’d never seen a Black student move so quickly through advanced subjects.
But Reason never treated education as a private gift. He believed learning was a force for justice. As an adult, he campaigned for school integration, led efforts to fund public education for Black children, and helped shape the curriculum at institutions built for newly freed students after the Civil War.
Then, in 1849, something happened that few thought possible: Reason was hired to teach mathematics, Greek, and Latin at Free Mission College. He became the first African American professor at a predominantly white college in the United States.
For Reason, teaching was a way to shape minds and the future they would help build.
Elbert Frank Cox was born in Indiana in 1895, the son of a school principal and a teacher. Education shaped his childhood, even as segregation shaped the world around him.
He studied mathematics at Indiana University, graduated near the top of his class, and returned to teach in segregated schools. When the U.S. entered World War I, Cox enlisted, then came home to a country where even the most educated Black men were still denied entry into academia.
Still, he applied to Cornell.
He arrived on campus with little fanfare and no roadmap. What he carried was a quiet sense of purpose. He completed his dissertation in 1925, focusing on polynomial solutions in differential equations—work that few American journals would publish. Abroad, Japanese mathematicians saw its merit and printed it.
Cox had made history: the first African American, and likely the first Black person in the world, to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics.
He spent the rest of his career at Howard University, building not just a math department, but a future for those who came next.
Euphemia Haynes never waited to be invited in.
Born in 1890 in Washington, D.C., she grew up in a city that offered limited futures to Black women, but she made her own path. She earned degrees in mathematics and education at a time when neither field welcomed women of color, and taught in local public schools for decades.
Then, at age 53, she went back to school not for a job, but for principle. In 1943, she became the first African American woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. She had no intention of stopping there.
Haynes became a force in Washington’s education system, eventually serving as president of the D.C. Board of Education. From that seat, she pushed to dismantle tracking systems that segregated students by race and income. She understood that math didn’t exist in isolation and neither did opportunity.
She opened doors through intellect, yes. But she kept them open through action.
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David Blackwell grew up in Centralia, Illinois, the son of a railroad worker and a schoolteacher. He didn’t dream of becoming a mathematician, not at first. He liked math, but mostly because it came easily. It wasn’t until college that he realized just how far that ease could take him.
At 22, he earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Illinois. He hoped to teach at a top university, but one by one, those doors stayed closed. Some praised his work, then quietly turned him away after learning he was Black.
So he kept going.
Blackwell became known for original thinking in probability, statistics, and game theory. One of his most lasting contributions? The Rao–Blackwell theorem—a breakthrough that helps statisticians improve the accuracy of their estimators. It became a cornerstone of modern statistical theory, and his name now appears in textbooks, lecture halls, and doctoral exams around the world.
In 1965, he became the first African American elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Genius isn’t always a compliment; it can be a weight.
Wilkins was born in Chicago to a teacher and a lawyer. His father, J. Ernest Wilkins Sr., would go on to become the first Black person to hold a sub-cabinet position in a U.S. presidential administration.
At just 13, Wilkins entered the University of Chicago. By 19, he had earned a Ph.D. in mathematics and was contributing to classified research on the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government’s secret effort to develop the atomic bomb—before he could legally vote.
Yes, let that sink in for a moment.
His brilliance stretched across fields: theoretical physics, nuclear engineering, optics, applied mathematics. He developed models for radiation shielding that are still used in nuclear reactors today.
But brilliance didn’t make him exempt from exclusion. Though invited to join the Manhattan Project, he was barred from key meetings at Oak Ridge because of his race. The contradiction was clear: trusted for the math, shut out of the room.
So he found his own rooms to lead.
In his forties, he earned additional degrees in mechanical and nuclear engineering. Later, at Howard University, he founded a Ph.D. program in mathematics and served as president of the American Nuclear Society.
Remarkable, in every direction.
Katherine Johnson was born in 1918 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, where schools for Black children stopped at eighth grade. Her parents moved the family 120 miles so she could continue her education.
By 18, she had graduated summa cum laude from West Virginia State College with degrees in mathematics and French, already proving that no distance was too great for a girl who loved numbers.
In 1953, Johnson joined NACA, NASA’s predecessor, as part of a segregated computing unit. Her precision soon earned her a transfer to the Flight Research Division, where she calculated trajectories for some of the earliest American spaceflights.
When John Glenn prepared to orbit Earth in 1962, he didn’t want to launch until Katherine checked the machine’s math. He trusted her calculations more than the computers.
Imagine the weight of a launch riding on your pencil and the astronaut saying, “Get the girl to check it.”
Johnson went on to contribute to the Apollo 11 lunar landing, the Apollo 13 emergency return, and early work on the Space Shuttle. She retired from NASA in 1986 after 33 years of service, but her influence only grew.
In 2015, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The world came to know her story through Hidden Figures, the bestselling book and Oscar-nominated film that spotlighted Black women mathematicians at NASA. But her impact was never about visibility. It was about being right when it mattered most.
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While Katherine Johnson calculated the paths to space, Annie Easley was building the systems to get us there.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1933, Easley was raised by a single mother who prioritized education. She graduated as valedictorian of her high school and studied pharmacy at Xavier University before marrying and relocating to Cleveland, Ohio.
When pharmacy jobs were scarce, she read a newspaper article about openings at NACA, the agency that would become NASA, and decided to apply.
Within two weeks, she was hired as a mathematics technician, joining a 2,500-person division where she was only the fourth Black employee. It started with pencil-and-paper calculations. But the work and the tools were changing fast. As digital computing took hold, Easley transitioned to programming, mastering FORTRAN and other languages to support NASA’s evolving missions.
While working full-time, she earned a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Cleveland State University in 1977. Her work supported projects on rocket propulsion, solar and wind energy, and battery technologies for hybrid vehicles—including code for the Centaur upper-stage rocket.
Easley also served as an equal employment opportunity counselor, advocating for diversity in STEM long before it was a national focus.
She spent 34 years shaping spaceflight and energy systems. Her impact lives on in both the code she wrote and the doors she helped open.
By the time Gloria Ford Gilmer began her career, Black mathematicians had already made their way into universities, labs, and national institutions. Gilmer’s work asked a different question: where else had mathematics been all along?
Born in Baltimore in 1928, she attended Morgan State University and later earned a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She taught at high schools and HBCUs, worked in industry, and returned again and again to classrooms, always driven by the same purpose: to make math visible where others had overlooked it.
She found it in braid patterns, quilt designs, oral storytelling, even the hand-painted signs in her Milwaukee neighborhood. Through this research, Gilmer helped establish ethnomathematics as a field, redefining who does math, where it happens, and how it’s valued.
She was the first Black woman to publish mathematics research in a refereed journal and the first to serve on the Board of Governors for the Mathematical Association of America.
Her teaching reached across generations. So did her questions. What counts as math? Who decides? And what do we miss when we stop at the equations?
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Talitha Washington came of age in a generation shaped by pioneers and set out to change what math leadership could look like next.
She grew up in Evansville, Indiana, where she excelled in math competitions and always asked follow-up questions. That curiosity led her to Spelman College, then to a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Connecticut.
Washington has taught at HBCUs, including Howard University and Spelman, but her influence extends far beyond the classroom. She leads national efforts to support underrepresented researchers and helps build infrastructure for inclusive innovation in science and technology.
As director of the Atlanta University Center Data Science Initiative, she’s working to expand access to data science across HBCUs, connecting students with tools to shape the future of healthcare, policy, and AI.
In 2020, she received the NSF’s inaugural Improving Undergraduate STEM Education award. In 2023, she became president of the Association for Women in Mathematics.
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At Mathnasium, we use stories like these to show students just how far math can take them. The fields of engineering, science, and technology aren’t separate from math; they’re built on it. And we believe every student should have the chance to explore where that path could lead.
We’re a math-only learning center dedicated to helping K–12 students of all skill levels grow. That growth goes beyond academic results. It’s about learning how to think like a mathematician and sometimes, even falling in love with the subject.
If your child is already curious about math, or if math hasn’t clicked yet because it hasn’t been taught in a way that makes sense, Mathnasium can help.
At the core of how we teach is the Mathnasium Method™, our proprietary approach, designed to help students truly understand math and unlock their potential.
It begins with a diagnostic assessment. We use it to pinpoint where your child excels, where there’s room to grow, and how they learn best, whether they need verbal explanations, visual examples, hands-on practice, or all of the above.
From there, we create a personalized learning plan that builds on their strengths and supports their challenges. Our instructors then teach the material face-to-face in a fun, focused, and encouraging environment.
Lessons often blend direct teaching with Socratic questioning and multisensory strategies: verbal, visual, tactile, written, and mental. When we teach a new concept, we don’t just aim for the right answer. We guide students through the how and why, so they gain reasoning skills they can apply in and out of math.
Many of our activities are game-based and hands-on, so sessions feel engaging rather than routine. We also use consistent rewards and progress milestones to keep motivation and confidence high.
We celebrate every win, whether it’s a breakthrough on a tough topic or the moment a student finally says, “I get it.”
Here’s what families report after joining Mathnasium:
94% of parents report an improvement in their child's math skills and understanding
93% of parents report an improved attitude towards math after attending Mathnasium
90% of students saw an improvement in their school grades
Whether your child is catching up, keeping up, or getting ahead, your local Mathnasium Learning Center is here to help.
Reach out, schedule a free diagnostic assessment, and let’s build their path to math success together.
Mathnasium of Cherry Creek is a math-only learning center for K-12 students in Denver, CO. Trusted by over a million parents, Mathnasium uses personalized learning plans and the proprietary Mathnasium Method™ to help students catch up, keep up, and get ahead on their math journey.
Our specially trained tutors deliver face-to-face instruction in a supportive and fun small-group environment, working with students both in center and online to develop a deep understanding of math, build confidence, and improve academic performance.
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(303) 333-6284
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