Godfrey Lambert Loudner (b. September 30, 1942, d. August 2, 2012)
In this blogpost, we will take a look at Godfrey L. Loudner Jr., one of the first American Indians who earned a PhD in mathematics.
Godfrey was born on September 30, 1942 in Fort Thompson, South Dakota to Claudiana Gladys Prue and Godrey L. Sr. Both parents were American Indians who were raised on reservations, Claudiana on the Rosebud Reservation and Godfrey Sr. on the Crow Creek Reservation. Godrey's family ran their own farm. Claudiana's early life is not as well documented and may have been marked by difficulty. By 1940, she was living in Fort Thompson with the family of her father, Chief of Police Guy W. Lambert. Godrey Sr. himself had left the farm and was working as a truck driver for a dam construction company.
Claudiana and Godrey Sr. married in 1941, the year before Godfrey Jr. was born. Likely seeking the greater opportunities offered by an urban environment, the family moved to Rapid City and Godfrey Sr. found welder.
Socially, the move was a huge one for the family. Claudiana and Godrey Sr. had been living in rural South Dakota among a predominately American Indian population for most of their lives. In Rapid City, they were the only Indians in their neighborhood.
Godfrey Jr. appears to have flourished in Rapid City. The attended a local school, and after graduating high school in 1961, he was awarded a scholarship to attend South Dakota Tech, Rapid City's main four-year university. He remained at the school to complete a M.S. degree in mathematics. He submitted his thesis, Selberg's Trace Formula, in 1869, and that May he presented the results at a sectional meeting of the Mathematical Association for America.
Its unclear what Godrey did immediately graduation, by within a year or two, he began pursuing a PhD at Notre Dame University. He completed a dissertation on functional analysis, Trace class operators on Banach spaces, under the supervision of Ronald A. Goldstein.
After graduating, he returned to South Dakota as faculty at the newly opened Sinte Gleska University. This was a return to Godrey's roots as the university is a tribal college located on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. Godrey stayed at the university for the remainder of his career. He died in 2012 at his home on the Rosebud Reservation.
Sources
1. National Archives at Washington, DC; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Year: 1950; Census Place: Rapid City, Pennington, South Dakota; Roll: 729; Page: 6; Enumeration District: 52-25
2/ Year: 1940; Census Place: Buffalo, South Dakota; Roll: m-t0627-03850; Page: 5B; Enumeration District: 9-6
3. "Marriages." The Republican [Valentine, South Dakota]. November 14, 1941. p. 1.
4. "Indians Get 20 Extra Scholarships." Daily Plainsman [Huron, South Dakota]. August 24, 1961. p. 7.
5. "Center of a group: E1909.” The American Mathematical Monthly 75, no. 1 (1968): 80–80.
6. "Finite Rings and Fields: 5462.” The American Mathematical Monthly 75, no. 2 (1968): 203–4.
7. “May Meeting of the Rocky Mountain Section.” The American Mathematical Monthly 76, no. 8 (1969): 986–87.
8. “Another way to be Catalan: 10357.” The American Mathematical Monthly 104, no. 2 (1997): 177–78.
