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Phyllis Chinn

American mathematician

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ18921538
Source-derived summary

Phyllis Zweig Chinn (née Zweig; born September 26, 1941) is an American mathematician who holds a professorship in mathematics, women's studies, and teaching preparation at Cal Poly Humboldt in California. Her publications concern graph theory, mathematics education, and the history of women in mathematics.

Education and career

Chinn was born in Rochester, New York and graduated in 1962 from Brandeis University. She earned her Ph.D. in 1969 from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a dissertation on graph isomorphism supervised by Paul Kelly.

She taught at Towson State College, a training school for teachers in Maryland, from 1969 to 1975, and earned tenure there in 1974, before moving to Cal Poly Humboldt. At the time she joined the Cal Poly Humboldt faculty, she was the first female mathematics professor there; the only other female professor in the sciences was a biologist.

In 1997 she became chair of the mathematics department at Cal Poly Humboldt.

Contributions

Chinn has written highly cited work on graph bandwidth, dominating sets, and on bandwidth.

Chinn is also an avid juggler, and founded a juggling club at Cal Poly Humboldt in the 1980s.

Recognition

Cal Poly Humboldt named Chinn as Outstanding Professor for 1988–1989.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Phyllis Chinn” as american mathematician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Phyllis, Chinn and American.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1941, 1962, 1969, 1975—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1941-09-26. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Phyllis, Chinn and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Phyllis Chinn”, the useful work is to connect “american mathematician” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18921538. VIAF identifies the subject as 25886269. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941, 1962, 1969 and 1975.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

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  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Phyllis Chinn”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Phyllis Chinn primary sources, Phyllis Chinn archive and Phyllis research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Phyllis Chinn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.