[3][4] With financial support from her aunt and a small partial scholarship from Phi Delta Kappa, Boyd entered Smith College in the fall of 1941.
Encouraged by a graduate scholarship from the Smith Student Aid Society of Smith College, she applied to graduate programs in mathematics and was accepted by both Yale University and the University of Michigan; she chose Yale because of the financial aid they offered.
[3][4][14] Following graduate school, Boyd went to New York University Institute for Mathematics and performed research and teaching there.
[17] Forced to move because of a restructuring at IBM,[4] she took a position at California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) in 1967 as a full professor of mathematics.
[18][19][20] The citation delivered at the 2007 MAA awards presentation, where Lee Lorch received a standing ovation, recorded that: Boyd married Reverend Gamaliel Mansfield Collins in 1961.
[24] After Edward passed, she returned to Washington, D.C. in 2010 and settled into retirement, "where she regularly bristled when she heard anyone say that "women can't do math".
[27] In 1989, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Smith College, the first one given by an American institution to an African-American woman mathematician.
[32] In 2000, she was awarded the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association's highest honour.