12 Facts About Virginia Ragsdale

Virginia Ragsdale was a teacher and mathematician specializing in algebraic curves.

Virginia Ragsdale is most known as the creator of the Ragsdale conjecture.

Virginia Ragsdale descended from Godfrey Ragsdale, a settler of the new Jamestown colony.

Virginia Ragsdale documented her early years in a paper titled "Our Early Home and Childhood", writing:.

Virginia Ragsdale was awarded the first scholarship from Bryn Mawr College for the top scholar Guilford College.

Virginia Ragsdale was elected European fellow for the class of 1896, but waited a year before traveling, working as an assistant demonstrator in physics and mathematics graduate student at Bryn Mawr.

Virginia Ragsdale's dissertation addressed the 16th of Hilbert's problems, for which Ragsdale formulated a conjecture that provided an upper bound on the number of topological circles of a certain type.

Virginia Ragsdale's result is called the Ragsdale conjecture; it was an open problem for 90 years until counterexamples were derived by Oleg Viro and Ilya Itenberg.

Virginia Ragsdale was head of the Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr from 1906 to 1911, and a reader for Charlotte Scott from 1908 to 1910.

Virginia Ragsdale returned to North Carolina in 1911 to accept a mathematics position at Woman's College in Greensboro.

Virginia Ragsdale remained there for almost two decades and served as department head from 1926 to 1928.

Virginia Ragsdale encouraged the school to buy a telescope, and the math department to add statistics to the curriculum.