Mary Frances Winston Newson

(August 7, 1869 - December 5, 1959)

Eureka College Faculty Member 1922-1942

Mary Frances Winston holds the distinction of being the first woman from the United States to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from a European university. She garnered this honor when she completed her graduate study in 1896 at the University of Göttingen in Germany where she produced the dissertation "Über den Hermiteschen Fall der Laméschen Differentialgleichungen" (On the Hermite Case of the Lamé Differential Equations).

Prior to her graduate study at Göttingen, Winston had earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics with honors at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she studied from 1884 to 1889. Her teaching career prior to her time at Eureka College included stints at Downer College (1889-1891); Bryn Mawr College (1891); University of Chicago (1892), where she held a fellowship; Kansas State Agricultural College (1896-1900); and Washburn College (1913-1921).

In 1900, Winston married fellow mathematician Henry Byron Newson who taught at the University of Kansas. Finding it difficult to be both a professor and homemaker, Mary Frances Winston Newson decided to take a hiatus from teaching in order to start a family. Within a decade she had three children, but tragedy soon struck the Newson household. Her husband died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1910 and the widow Newson had to raise her three young children with little means of financial support. After three years of struggling to get by, Professor Newson decided to return to the classroom in 1913.

As she began the second phase of her academic career, war clouds were rising on the European horizon. During the summer of 1914 Newson watched Germany and the other nations of Europe fall precipitously into a conflict that would have tragic consequences. Perhaps she, more than others, understood the tremendous loss that the First World War would bring to Europe, but she was also keenly aware of the dangerous consequences that releasing the dogs of war would have on the United States as well. It was during this period of her life that Professor Newson was transformed into an internationalist and a champion of academic freedom.

In the aftermath of the First World War, the United States entered into a dark phase of its history where domestic terrorism was a real threat and the fear of foreign influences was paramount. In this so-called Red Scare free thought and inquiry, the hallmarks of a liberally-educated people, were trampled by insidious forces that sought to hush discontent, promote groupthink, and instill fear in the hearts of all. When Professor Newson witnessed a colleague in political science at Washburn College being dismissed because of his political views, she resigned from that institution and returned to Illinois with her children. Integrity has a cost.

Professor Newson hoped that Eureka College, in the spirit of its Founders, would be an institution with values like her own. Her years of service at this school, from 1922 to 1942, roughly coincided with the interwar period between the two world wars of the twentieth century—a time in the United States when isolation from world affairs became the byword of the day. Mary Frances Winston Newson was unwilling to permit such a foolish concept to exist at Eureka College. She wanted the students to know of the world and to think in broad terms of the United States’ relationship to other nations. It is instructive to note that Durward V. Sandifer (Class of 1924) and Ronald W. Reagan (Class of 1932) both had an opportunity to study at Eureka College when Professor Newson’s influence was felt upon this campus. In addition, she was instrumental in helping to establish a chapter of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) on the Eureka College campus. Clearly this one individual had a profound impact upon the prevailing ethos of the College, even if it was an influence that ran counter to the prevailing attitudes in the nation at the time.

Mary Frances Winston Newson was a champion of academic freedom, of the centrality of international studies to the liberal arts, and of the belief that one individual can (and must) make a difference, even in spite of overwhelming odds. Since 1975 the Social Science & Business Division at Eureka College has sponsored the Newson Lecture in International Affairs to commemorate the life and service of a remarkable professor who changed this institution in many ways.

If you wish to learn more about the remarkable life and career of Mary Frances Winston Newson, I would suggest that you read Jane Simurdiak Groeper’s essay on Professor Newson published in Echoes from Eureka’s Past (1994).