LaDuke was raised on a farm in Posey County,[1] in southwest Indiana. Her parents were college-educated and an aunt who taught mathematics in Chicago frequently visited, bringing mathematics puzzles for LaDuke.[2]
As a child, she was cast from a field of 12,000 4-H members to play a small part in The Green Promise (1948)[1] as farm girl Jessie Wexford, the sister of Natalie Wood's character's love interest.[3] Wood and LaDuke shared a tutor who taught them both string games as well as their school curriculum.[4]
Education
LaDuke studied mathematics at DePauw University in the 1950s, and roomed with another mathematics major from Oregon, who showed her the state on summer camping trips.[2]
She earned a master's degree in mathematics, but was unable to obtain a teaching position with it because the schools she applied to only hired men. She returned to Oregon in 1966 as a doctoral student at the University of Oregon,[2] and completed her Ph.D. in 1969 with a dissertation in mathematical analysis supervised by Kenneth A. Ross on Ep Space: Essentially a Product of Cp Spaces.[5]
Mathematics career
After completing her doctorate, LaDuke spent the following thirty years as a faculty member of the department of mathematical sciences at DePaul University.[2] She retired in 2003.[6]