William Thomas Fletcher is an American mathematician.

He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees (major in mathematics) from North Carolina Central University

North Carolina Central University

North Carolina Central University is a public historically black university in the University of North Carolina system, located in Durham, North Carolina, offering programs at the baccalaureate, master’s, professional and doctoral levels....

 (NCCU), Durham, NC in 1956 and 1958 respectively. He received the Ph.D. degree in mathematics from the University of Idaho in 1966. In 1957 Dr. Fletcher accepted his first teaching position in the department of mathematics at LeMoyne-Owen College

LeMoyne-Owen College

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, Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....

, where he served as chairman until 1972. For the ten-year period 1962–72 Fletcher pursued summer employment as a mathematical applications computer programmer in industry, business, and government at IBM Mohansic Laboratory (Yorktown Heights, NY), Western Electric (Hopewell, NJ), the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (Livermore, CA), and the US Departments of Commerce (Washington, DC), Agriculture (St. Paul, Minn), and Energy (Livermore, CA).

In 1972 Fletcher returned to NCCU as professor and chairman of the mathematics department where he joined his former teacher and mentor, Marjorie Lee Browne

Marjorie Lee Browne

Marjorie Lee Browne was a notable mathematics educator, the second African-American woman to receive a doctoral degree in the U.S., and one of the first black women to receive a doctorate in mathematics in the U.S....

, the second African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Mathematics. During his 25 year tenure at NCCU Fletcher instituted a BS degree in computer science; organized the Marjorie Lee Browne Distinguished Alumni Lectures Series; developed, with two other alumni the Marjorie Lee Browne Memorial Scholarship; led several summer institutes for science and math teachers; organized a Department Speaker Bureau; developed, with other department members, the Mathematics Department Resource Learning Center;and was the principal writer of a proposal to establish a chapter of Sigma Xi at NCCU. He held membership in several professional organizations; served on several boards including the North Carolina State Board of Science and Technology; received several awards including outstanding teacher of the year (1990); the Year 2000 NC State Award in Science, the highest award that the State of NC can bestow upon a citizen. He was the recipient of the 2005 Durham County and North Carolina State Jaycees awards for outstanding community service.

Publications

• "On the Decomposition of Associative Algebras of Prime Characteristic", Journal of Algebra, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1970, pp. 227–236.

• "On Whitehead's Second Lemma for Lie Algebras", International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 29, No. 3, 1982, pp. 521–523.

• "On the Structure of Associative Algebras Relative to Their Radicals", Rev. Roumaine Math. Pures Appl., Vol. 29, Vol. 4, 1984, pp. 301–307.

• "Implementing the Recommendation of CUPM in A Small Mathematics Department", Newsletter, CUPM; The Mathematical Association of America, 1970.

• "The Nature of Mathematics and Its Importance in a Liberal Education",The Mathematics Newsletter, Vol. VII, No. 2, University of Idaho, 1965.

• "The Mathematics Learning Center", Proceedings of the ICMI-JSME Regional Conference on Mathematics Education, 1983.

• "Some Optimizations of the ANIMAL Code", Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Technical Publication; University of California, 1975.

• "Marjorie Lee Browne – A Biography", Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History, Columbia University, New York, New York, 1994.

• "Marjorie Lee Browne – An American Mathematician", Twenty-Century Scientists, Gale Research, Inc., Detroit, MI