Joséphine Guidy Wandja


Joséphine Guidy Wandja is an Ivorian mathematician. She is the first African woman with a PhD in mathematics.

Early life

She moved to France aged 14. She attended the Lycée Jules-Ferry in Paris, and later the Pierre and Marie Curie University. Her masters degree thesis was entitled Sous les courbes fermées convexes du plan et les théorémes des quatre sommets. Whilst working in Paris in the late 1960s she was advised by René Thom, Henri Cartan and Paulette Liberman. She studied for a PhD at the University of Abidjan, becoming the first African woman to get a PhD in mathematics.

Career

In 1969, she worked at the Lycée Jacques Amyot in Melun, before working for a year at the Paris Diderot University. In 1971, she joined the University of Abidjan, as a mathematics lecturer. In doing so, she became the first African female university mathematics professor. In 1983, she was appointed the president of the International Committee on Mathematics in Developing Countries. The organisation was set up during the International Mathematical Union conference in Warsaw, Poland, but without the IMU's knowledge. In 1986, she wrote a humorous 24 page mathematical comic book Yao crack en maths. In 1985, she organised an ICOMIDC conference in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast.
She is an officer of the Ivorian Order of Merit of National Education, and the French Ordre des Palmes Académiques.

Publications