Rhoda Manning

Title: Rhoda Manning
LC Subject: Universities and colleges--Faculty Portraits Mathematics
Description: Dr. Rhoda Manning was an Associate Professor of Mathematics at OSC from 1941 to 1955. She was born in 1912, in Palo Alto, California, and was the daughter of another prominent mathematician, Dr. W.A. Manning of Stanford. She was educated at Stanford, where she received her Bachelor of Arts with great distinction in 1935, her Master of Science in 1937, and her PhD. in 1941 in Mathematics and Biochemistry. She was a member of several honor societies, including Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Lambda Theta, where she was keeper of the records. For her master’s thesis, she wrote “On the Limit of the Degree of Simply Transitive Groups of Class Eighteen.” For her doctorate, she wrote “On the Derivates of the Sections of Bonded Power Series.” Before coming to OSC, she was a teaching assistant at Stanford. In 1942, after only one year of teaching, Mount Holyoke endeavored to draw Dr. Manning to join their faculty. They offered her a salary of $2,300--an increase of $400. Her head of department, Dr. W.E. Milne, recommended they match the salary offer, and wrote a letter to President Gilfillan expressing that Manning was “irreplacable,” and “the only member of the staff about whose teaching there has not been a single word of criticism.” Mount Holyoke increased their offer to $2,600, but Manning chose to remain at OSU for a lower salary. She expressed that she felt she best did her duty during the war emergency by helping to train engineers, and she felt loyal to OSU. In 1946, Dr. Manning became seriously ill. Through fall term, her father carried her course load, and she thereafter took a leave of absence for the next two terms. The next year, she requested another leave of absence for 1947-48 to pursue research in group theory under the direction of her father at Stanford. Concerned about burdening her with a heavy teaching load and reigniting her illness, her supervisors granted her request in order to ensure her recovery was stable. In 1955, Dr. Manning resigned in order to be married. She was hired at a salary of $1,900 and resigned at a salary of $5,800.
Work Type: photographic prints photographs black-and-white photographs
Date: 1941-01-09
Identifier: P092:0952
Rights: In Copyright
Local Collection Name: President's Office Photographs, 1923-1998 (P 092)
Type: Image
Format: image/tiff
Set: OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center Historical Images of Oregon State University
Primary Set: OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center
Institution: Oregon State University