Mayer was born in
Pettis County, Missouri, the third of five children of a parochial school teacher, Anna Poinsignon, and a farmer, Edward John Mayer. The first school she attended was Sacred Heart School in
Sedalia, Missouri but then the family moved many times including to
Los Angeles, California,
Phoenix, Arizona,
Portland, Oregon,
Kansas City, Missouri,
Nashville, Tennessee,
Salt Lake City, Utah, and back to
San Jose, California where she graduated from
Notre Dame High School. Throughout her life, she attended and taught only in Catholic schools. Mayer received her B.A. degree from
Dominican College in
San Rafael in 1927 with a major in mathematics and a minor in philosophy. While there she was influenced by mathematician
Anna Marie Whelan. Mayer immediately enrolled in graduate school at
Marquette University in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and in 1928 she received her MA degree with the thesis titled:
A geometric interpretation and classification of the invariants of the binary and ternary conics and cubics, directed by
Harvey Pierson Pettit.
Educator From 1929 to 1930, while she was finishing her doctoral studies, she served as department head at
Marymount College in
Salina, Kansas. In 1930 the
Mathematical Association of America announced her membership. In 1932 she taught in San Jose, California, and from 1937 to 1938 she was an instructor at Seton Hill College (now
Seton Hill University), which was a Catholic women's college at the time, located in
Greensburg, Pennsylvania. In 1939 she taught at
Xavier University in
New Orleans, described as "the only Catholic institution among the historically black colleges and universities" at that time. According to Green, "Mayer wrote in a letter to the Marquette graduate school dean in 1956 that she left teaching in 1942 and had supported herself since by buying and selling stocks." During
World War II, she worked in
Washington, D.C., and in 1950 for the Guided Missiles Committee of the Department of Defense, Pentagon, Washington, D.C. She worked for more than 13 years at the Military Personnel Records Center in
St. Louis, Missouri.
Personal life Mayer died February 28, 1991, in San Jose, California and was buried at the
Santa Clara Mission Cemetery. == Memberships ==