Mary Lee Wheat Gray (born in Hastings on April 8, 1938) is an American mathematician, statistician, and lawyer. She is the author of books and papers in the fields of mathematics, mathematics education, computer science, applied statistics, economic equity, discrimination law, and academic freedom. She was founding member and first president of the Association for Women in Mathematics.
Biography and career Gray completed her undergraduate degree in mathematics in 1959 from Hastings College. Supported by a Fulbright Fellowship, she then studied for one year at Goethe Universität Frankfurt. After she returned to the US she began her graduate studies in mathematics at University of Kansas, where she obtained a MA in 1962 and a Ph.D. in 1964. She worked later at University of California at Berkeley and at California State University at Hayward. Since 1968 she worked at the American University in Washington. In 1973 she was elected as an AMS Member at Large. She held this position until 1975. Gray worked closely with her AU colleague, chemist Nina Roscher, to improve resources for women and minorities in mathematics and science and prevent them from dropping classes. They created an apprenticeship program to help show first year female students an interdisciplinary, people-oriented perspective of scientists. The program, funded by a $95,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) included a seminar course followed by a two-month apprenticeship working with a scientist engaged in science policy work. Gray completed in 1979 her J.D. from Washington College of Law. She is a member of the District of Columbia and U.S. Supreme Court bars. She is currently on the Board of Advisers for POMED (Project on Middle East Democracy) and is the chair of the Board of Directors of AMIDEAST (America-Mideast Educational and Training Services, Inc.).
Role within the Association for Women in Mathematics Gray was one of the founding members of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and the first President of the AWM from 1971 to 1973. As reported in A Brief History of the Association for Women in Mathematics: The Presidents' Perspectives, by Lenore Blum,"As Judy Green remembers (and Chandler Davis, early AWM friend, concurs): 'The formal idea of women getting together and forming a caucus was first made publicly at a MAG [Mathematics Action Group] meeting in 1971 ... in Atlantic City. Joanne Darken, then an instructor at Temple University and now at the Community College of Philadelphia, stood up at the meeting and suggested that the women present remain and form a caucus. I have been able to document six women who remained: me (I was a graduate student at Maryland at the time), Joanne Darken, Mary [W.] Gray (she was already at American University), Diane Laison (then an instructor at Temple), Gloria Olive (a Senior Lecturer at the University of Otago, New Zealand, who was visiting the U.S. at the time) and Annie Selden...It's not absolutely clear what happened next, except that I've personally always thought that Mary was responsible for getting the whole thing organized ....'".Mary W. Gray was the early organizer, placing an advertisement in the February 1971 Notices of the AMS, and writing the first issue of the AWM Newsletter that May. Again as reported by Lenore Blum,"What I remember hearing about Mary [W.] Gray and the Atlantic City Meetings, indeed what perked my curiosity, was an entirely different event, one that was also to alter dramatically the character of the mathematics community. In those years the AMS was governed by what could only be called an "old boys network," closed to all but those in the inner circle. Mary challenged that by sitting in on the Council meeting in Atlantic City. When she was told she had to leave, she refused saying she would wait until the police came. (Mary relates the story somewhat differently: When she was told she had to leave, she responded she could find no rules in the by-laws restricting attendance at Council meetings. She was then told it was by "gentlemen's agreement." Naturally Mary replied "Well, obviously I'm no gentleman.") After that time, Council meetings were open to observers and the process of democratization of the Society had begun."
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