Mary Nicholas Arnoldy

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Sister
Mary Nicholas Arnoldy
C. S. J., Ph.D.
Personal
Born
Katherine Helen Arnoldy

(1893-03-07)March 7, 1893
Tipton, Mitchell, Kansas, USA
DiedSeptember 28, 1985(1985-09-28) (aged 92)
Concordia, Cloud, Kansas, USA
ReligionRoman Catholic
NationalityAmerican

Mary Nicholas Arnoldy (1893–1985) was a Roman Catholic Sister of St. Joseph of Concordia (Kansas), and a mathematician.[1] Along with M. Henrietta Reilly, and Mary Domitilla Thuener, she was one of a very few women and Catholic sisters to earn a doctorate in mathematics before 1940.[2]

Early life and education

She was born Katherine Helen Arnoldy to Anna Katherine Holz (1855-1944), born in Iowa, and Nicholas "Nick" Arnoldy (1844-1920), born in Kaschenbach, Bitburg-Prum, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany.[3] She had nine sisters and brothers. Each of her parents had an eighth-grade education, and her father worked as a retail grocer.[4]

She went to Catholic grade school in Tipton, Kansas, and then attended Nazareth Academy in Concordia, Kansas. In 1910 she entered the Nazareth Convent, and she professed her first vows in 1912. She and two other sisters joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia.[5] Her oldest sister Elizabeth, who died at age 29, became Sister Mary Modesta. Her sister Mary became Sister Mary Domitilla (not to be confused with mathematician Mary Domitilla Thuener), and taught biology at the same college where Mary Nicholas Arnoldy would spend her mathematics career. There was also a sister Cleophas Arnoldy, who may have also been a relative.[6]

She taught in Kansas for 17 years before beginning doctoral studies, working at Kansas schools in Antonino and

Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, in its Pius X School of Liturgical Music. After this somewhat patchwork of education and employment, in 1929 she finally received her bachelor's degree from Kansas State Agricultural College
(now Kansas State University).

That same graduation year, 1929, she went to Washington, DC to study at

Aubrey Edward Landry.[10][11]

Mathematics career

After her doctorate she returned to Kansas to join the faculty at

KCKT-TV Channel 2.[14] She became chair of the department of mathematics, and sometimes served as registrar.[15] One of her papers was “Reality of the double tangent contact parameters of the rational symmetric quartic curve” (Mathematical Association of America, 1934).[16]
She retired in 1966.

Legacy and death

After retirement from Marymount College, she taught mathematics at Sacred Heart High School in Salina, Kansas, and also at Notre Dame High School in Concordia. She also worked at Central Catholic High School in Grand Island, Nebraska.

She retired fully at age 80, moving to the Medaille Center in Salina, Kansas, that later became the site of St. John's Hospital. She was a master tatter, and an avid gardener, and pursued them both more fully. Ten years later she returned to the Nazareth Motherhouse in Concordia. She died two years later, at age 92, in 1985, in her 76th year of religious life. She is buried in Nazareth Convent Cemetery, Concordia, Cloud County, Kansas.[17]

References

  1. ^ "493 are Awarded Degrees at C. U.: Archbishop Curley Confers Honors at Annual Exercises". The Evening Star (Washington, DC). 14 June 1933.
  2. ISBN 9780821843765
    .
  3. ^ "Nicholas Arnoldy". 1880 United States Federal Census: 7–296. 12 June 1880.
  4. ^ Green; LaDuke (eds.). Pioneering Women in American Mathematics. p. 127.
  5. ^ "History | Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia, Kansas". 19 January 2009.
  6. ^ Thomas, Evangeline (Sister/PhD) (1948). Footprints on the Frontier: A History of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, Concordia, Kansas. Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press. p. 385.
  7. ^ "Summer School". Kansas State Agricultural College Bulletin: n395. 1925.
  8. ^ Thomas. Footprints on the Frontier. p. 219.
  9. ^ "C. U. Gives Awards to 364 Graduates: Degrees and Diplomas are Presented by Archbishop Curley at Exercises". The Evening Star (Washington, DC). 12 June 1930. p. C-12.
  10. ^ Arnoldy, Mary Nicholas (29 July 1932). The Reality of the Double Tangents of the Rational Symmetric Quartic Curve (PhD Thesis). Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America.
  11. ^ "Arnoldy, Mary Nicholas, Sister". Catalog of Copyright Entries 1932 Books. New Series. 29 (1). Washington, DC: The Library of Congress: 1345. 1932.
  12. ^ Ackerman, Patricia E. (2014). Marymount College of Kansas: A History. Los Angeles, California: The History Press.
  13. ^ "Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society". 40 (9). American Mathematical Society. 1934: 53.
  14. ^ "Marymount Evening Classes are Announced". The Salina Journal. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Modern Algebra, Sr. Mary Nicholas Arnoldy (course televised over NBC network at 6 a.m.)
  15. ^ "S (alphabetic letter)". Bulletin of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars. 12 (4): 442. 1937.
  16. ^ "The Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Kansas Section of the Mathematical Association of America". The American Mathematical Monthly. 41. Mathematical Association of America: 406. 1934.
  17. ^ Green; LaDuke (eds.). Pioneering Women in American Mathematics. p. 128.
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