Elbert Frank Cox was born in 1895. He was an African American mathematician and educator. Cox was born in Evansville, Indiana; he was the oldest of three boys born to Johnson D. Cox, an elementary school principal, and his wife Eugenia D. Cox.
Close knit and highly religious, the Cox family has respect for learning the mirrored the father’s educational career. When Cox demonstrated unusual ability in high school mathematics and physics, he was directed towards Indiana University. While at Indiana, he was elected to undergraduate offices and joined the Kappa Alpha Phi fraternity. After graduation in 1917, Cox entered the U. S. Army during World War I and was promoted to staff sergeant in six months.
Upon discharge, he became an instructor of mathematics at a high school in Henderson, Kentucky. In 1920 or 1921 Cox joined the faculty of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, and left there two years later to attend Cornell University with a full scholarship. In the summer of 1925, when Cox received his doctorate from Cornell, he became the first black to earn such a degree in pure mathematics, a field concerned with mathematical theory rather than practice or application. In the fall of 1925, Cox became the head of the mathematics and physics department at West Virginia State College.
He married Beulah P. Kaufman, an elementary school teacher, on September 14, 1927. They later had three sons. In 1929, he moved to Washington, D. C. , to join the faculty of Howard University.
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In 1947, Cox became chair of Howard’s department of mathematics, a position held until 1961. In addition to his marks his contributions to abstract mathematics, he made his mark as an educator by helping craft Howard’s grading system the years he joined their staff and by advising numerous successful master degree candidates in mathematics. He remained a full professor in the department until his retirement in 1966. Elbert Frank Cox was the first African American to earn a Ph.
D in pure mathematics. During his career, Cox specialized in difference equations, interpolation theory, and differential equations. In 1975, the Howard University Mathematics Department, at the time of the inauguration of the Ph. D program, established the Elbert F. Cox Scholarship Fund for undergraduate mathematics majors to encourage young black students to study mathematics at the graduate level. While Cox did not live see the inauguration of the Ph.
D program at Howard, it is believed by many that Cox did much to make it possible.
