HISTORY OF THE SOUTHWESTERN SECTION
              OF THE MATHEMATICAL ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA (1936 - 1996)

Beginning of Southwestern Section - 1936

The By-laws for the Southwestern Section of MAA were adopted by a group of mathematicians at the sixteenth annual meeting of the Southwestern Division of AAAS held April 27-30, 1936 in Flagstaff and Grand Canyon, AZ. Speakers at this meeting were Harold Colton, Museum of Northern Arizona, president of the section, Dr. Tormey, president of Arizona State Teachers College of Flagstaff (now NAU) and John C. Merriam (for whom Merriam Crater in northern Arizona was named), president of the Carnegie Foundation. 

The chairman of the mathematics section of that 1936 meeting was F. W. Sparks from Texas Technological College at Lubbock and the secretary was W. C. Risselman from Arizona State Teachers College at Flagstaff. Beside these two, considerable credit must be given to C. V. Newsom, University of New Mexico, for organizing the section. A copy of the original by-laws is in Appendix A. With the approval of the Board of Governors the Southwestern Section became the twenty-first of what is now twenty-nine sections. There were only six charter members each from Arizona and New Mexico and probably more than that from West Texas. Their names could not be found, but a list of thirteen members that attended the first meeting in 1937 is given in the secretarial report of that year. There were no charter institutional members.  More detail...