Mary de Lellis Gough


Sister Mary de Lellis Gough was an Irish–American mathematician.

Life

She was born in Kilmore, County Wexford, Ireland. Her parents were Ellen Dunne and Walter Gough. She came to Texas in 1909 with a group of young Irish women, and joined the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, taking vows as Mary de Lellis in 1911.

Career

While working as a high school teacher, she studied at the Catholic University of America. She graduated in 1920, earned a master's degree in 1923, and completed her PhD from the same university in 1931.
Her PhD dissertation was entitled On the condition for the existence of triangles in and circumscribed to certain types of the rational quartic curve and having a common side and supervised by Aubrey Edward Landry.
She taught mathematics at Incarnate Word College from 1920 to 1943.