Gertrude Blanch


Papers, 1932-1996


CBI 162

 

4 cubic feet in 9 boxes

Creator: Blanch, Gertrude, 1897-1996

By: Corinne Florin, August 2001

ACQUISITION:  The records were given to the Charles Babbage Institute in 2000 by the family of Gertrude Blanch.

ACCESS: The collection is unrestricted.

COPYRIGHT: The Charles Babbage Institute holds the copyright to all materials in the collection, except for items covered by a prior copyright (such as published materials).

Researchers may quote from the collection under the fair use provisions of the copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code).

PREFERRED CITATION: Please cite the collection as follows: Gertrude Blanch Papers (CBI 162), Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Biography

Gertrude Blanch, 1897-1996, mathematician, received the B.S. in mathematics with a physics minor from New York University (1932) and the Ph.D. (1935) in algebraic geometry from Cornell University.

Born Gittel Kaimowitz in Kolno, Poland, Blanch emigrated to New York with her family in 1907.  After receiving her Ph.D., she taught at Hunter College from 1935-1936.  Her doctoral dissertation, Properties of the Veneroni Transformation in S4, was published in the American Journal of Mathematics in 1936.

From 1938-1942, Blanch served as technical director of the Mathematical Tables Project in New York.   The Mathematical Tables Project was funded by the Works Projects Administration.  By 1941 it employed 450 human computers.  In 1942 the project became part of the wartime Office for Scientific Research and Development, and Blanch became a mathematician for the New York office of the Applied Math panel of the OSRD.   

During the war, the Mathematical Tables Project created ballistics calculations for the Army, navigation tables for the Navy, and provided the fundamental calculations for the Manhattan Project.  After the war the project was absorbed into the computation laboratory of the National Bureau of Standards.  While still in New York, Blanch took an active interest in the newly-announced electronic computing machines, and was involved with the group that would later found the Association for Computing Machinery.

In 1948, Blanch became assistant to the director at the Institute for Numerical Analysis in Los Angeles, another branch of the Applied Mathematics Laboratory.  In 1954 she was appointed senior mathematician at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, in which capacity she served until her retirement in 1967.  While she was at Dayton, Blanch published half of her 30 papers, and received several citations and awards, including her election as Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Air Force Exceptional Service Award (both in 1963), and the Federal Woman’s Award in 1964. 

Upon her retirement from the Air Force, Blanch was awarded a consulting contract by the Air Force through Ohio State University.  When this contract was canceled in 1970 she moved back to California and worked on her second book, which was never published. 

Source:

Grier, David Alan.  “Gertrude Blanch of the Mathematical Tables Project,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, v. 19, no. 4 (1997):  18-27.

Scope and Content


The collection includes Blanch’s lectures given during the 1940s and 1960; published articles and notes for her two unpublished manuscripts, 1935-1994; colleagues’ and others’ writings collected by Blanch, 1895-1969; and photographs of Blanch, alone, with colleagues and friends, and at awards ceremonies, 1930s-1966.  The collection also contains a small amount of biographical material, 1932-1967, including awards and citations, records relating to her employment, 1954-1967, and documentation regarding immigration and naturalization, affidavit of birth, and record of name change.   Also included is a small amount of personal and professional correspondence, 1957-1994.  There are also two interviews on cassette tapes.  One, dated 1989, contains an interview with Blanch by her colleague Henry Thacher and centers on her career and professional life.  On the other, labeled “late in her life,” Blanch is interviewed by her nephew Michael Stern, and discusses her early years and personal life.

Arrangement of the collection

The collection is arranged in five series:  talks and writings by Gertrude Blanch; writings by others; photographs; correspondence; and biographical materials.

Index terms


Inventory


Talks and Writings by Gertrude Blanch, 1936-1994: 

Talks

Writings  

Research Notes

Mathieu Functions, 1965-1968 (Box 3, folder 3)

o       Mathieu Functions 1965

o       Subsidiary Routines Mathieu Characteristic Values, March 1966

o       Solution of Mathieu’s Equation 1966, 1968

o       Characteristic Exponent Mathieu Equation, n.d.

Miscellaneous Research Notes, n.d. (Box 3, folder 4)

o       Ozalids

o       Distribution Functions for nth Differences

o       Bessel Functions J0(x), Y0(x), J1(x), Y1(x) x ≥ 8 (includes punch cards)

Unpublished Manuscripts (no dates)

Writings by others, 1895-1969:

Canosa, Jose.  (Box 7, folder 4)

 

Photographs, 1935-1964:

Correspondence, 1957-1994:

Biographical Materials, 1932-1989:

     Documents (Box 8, folder 12)

     Related Materials and Items

     Clippings

     Audiotapes

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