Fay Farnum (August 24, 1888, in Spencer, Iowa – March 11, 1977, in Tucson, Arizona) was an American mathematician and university professor and one of the few women to earn a PhD in math before World War II.
She received her Ph.D. in 1926 under the supervision of mathematician Virgil Snyder with her dissertation: On Triadic Cremona Nets of Plane Curves.
[1][2] She started teaching at Washington Square College (now New York University) in 1926 and stayed there for several years, first as an instructor and later as an assistant professor.
During the 1939–1940 school year, Farnum took a leave of absence from NYU to attend the Physics and Mathematics Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, but in April 1940, troops from Nazi, Germany, invaded Denmark during World War II, requiring her to cut short her studies and return to her position at NYU.
[2] In 1943, she moved to Iowa State where she taught until 1949 because the math department needed help meeting the demands of the new Army and Navy students.