Kay Whitehead (Kathleen Butcher Whitehead) died on April 18 in her home at the age of 88.
Kay was born on November 9, 1920, in Shelborne, Ontario. She received a B.A. from Queens University in Ontario in 1942, an M.A. from Smith College in 1943 and a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1946, having specialized in topology.
In 1947 she married George Whitehead, also a topologist, who served on the MIT faculty 1949-1985, and who died in 2004 (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/whitehead.html).
Kay held positions at Wellesley 1947-1949, Brown 1949-1950, Smith College 1949-1950, Boston University 1950-1951, and Brandeis 1951-1958 before joining the mathematics department at Tufts University. Here she served as Undergraduate Coordinator. Her appointments were as Lecturer (1960-1962), Assistant Professor (1962-1976) and Senior Lecturer (1976-1985).
Today, the Tufts mathematics department has 5 (of 17) female faculty on tenure track or tenured, 3 of them full professors, but Kay was a pioneer. In her case, Tufts University ignored an informal rule against keeping non-tenured personnel for more than seven years. Until the 1970s, she was repeatedly given one-year contracts.
Kay retired in 1985 when her husband did. She is well-remembered in the Tufts Department of Mathematics, and the couple returned for occasional visits in their years of retirement.