Etta Zuber Falconer (November 21, 1933 – September 19, 2002) was an American educator and mathematician the bulk of whose career was spent at Spelman College, where she eventually served as department head and associate provost.

[5][2] At the age of 15 she entered Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she majored in mathematics and minored in chemistry, graduating summa cum laude in 1953.

[1] Her teachers included the talented mathematician Evelyn Granville, one of the first African American women to receive a doctoral degree in mathematics.

[7] In 1965, by which time she had married, changed her name to Etta Falconer, and started teaching at Spelman College in Atlanta, she entered graduate school at Emory University where she earned a Ph.D. in mathematics (1969), with a dissertation on quasigroup theory, supervised by Trevor Evans[8][9] She later published two research papers based on her dissertation work, one of which was published in 1971 by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

She remained at Okolona until 1963, when she accepted a position at Howard High School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she taught the academic year 1963–64.

Falconer advanced to associate professor, leaving Spelman in 1971 to join the mathematics department at Norfolk State University, where she taught for the academic year 1971–1972.

[13] Falconer devoted 37 years of her life to teaching mathematics and improving science education at Spelman College.