Sister Marie Augustine Dowling loved puzzles ? math puzzles, logic puzzles, word puzzles.
“She always had the books with her. Any kind of puzzle she loved,” said former colleague Sister Kara Ryan.
Dowling made puzzles and equations her life?s work as a math professor at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland in Baltimore City, where she worked for 40 years.
Dowling died of cancer complications last week at Maria Health Care Center in Baltimore. She was 82.
A native of Baltimore City, Dowling became a teacher at the College of Notre Dame in 1959 and worked there until she retired in 2004.
“Sister Marie Augustine made mathematics come alive, ” said Sister Delia Dowling, president of the Sisters Academy of Baltimore and Dowling?s cousin.
“She was one of the few people that I have seen who made people love mathematics,” Ryan said.
Dowling joined the School Sisters of Notre Dame in 1944 and graduated from the College of Notre Dame in 1945 with a degree in mathematics and a minor in chemistry.
She went on to earn a master?s in science at Catholic University in Washington, in 1958 and taught at St. Mary?s High School in Annapolis and Notre Dame Preparatory School in Towson before joining the math faculty to the College of Notre Dame.
Friends remember her caring and generous spirit. Dowling looked after her ill mother for almost 13 years and became a volunteer after she retired in 2004.
“She was very sensitive to other people,” Ryan said.
