Lulu Hofmann Bechtolsheim was one of only 110 U.S. women to have earned the Ph.D. in mathematics before 1930 and she was one of the 228 women profiled in Judy Green's and Jeanne LaDuke's 2009 history, Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's. Born May 27 (=33, as she was fond of pointing out), 1902, in New York City to German parents, Lulu Hofmann grew up in Frankfurt, Germany, with her older sister Emy, also born in New York, and her younger sister Ilse, born in Frankfurt. Her father, Otto Hofmann, was a banker and her mother, Clara Olshauson Hofmann, a homemaker from a "long line of academicians," according to Lulu's niece, Marie-Gabriele Lindenborn, who also reported that Otto and Clara Hofmann encouraged their daughters to pursue higher education and careers.
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