A Korean woman will become the first female mathematics professor with tenure at Yale University, entering a field of the school which has been off-limits to women mathematicians for 312 years.

The Korea Institute for Advanced Society said Wednesday that Oh Hee, one of its scholars who is a professor at Brown University, will become a faculty member and hold a tenured position at the department of mathematics at Yale on July 1.

It is the first time since the U.S. Ivy League university was founded in 1701 that it has recruited a woman as a tenured professor in mathematics.

She graduated from Seoul National University with a major in mathematics in 1992, acquired a mathematics Ph.D. from Yale and served as a professor at Princeton and California Institute of Technology.

Oh, 44, has been serving as a KIAS scholar since 2008.

By Chun Sung-woo (swchun@heraldcorp.com)