Elizabeth Preston Brown was born in 1863 in Front Royal Virginia and graduated with a B.S. from Columbian
University (now George Washington) in Washington, DC. She did her post-graduate work at
Johns Hopkins University in mathematics by special permission of the faculty through Prof.
Simon Newcomb. She became a computer in the NAO and assisted in the preparation of
Newcomb's Tables of the Sun and Planets. Miss Brown married Dr. Arthur Powell Davis, on June 20, 1888. Dr. Davis was the chief engineer of the U. S. Reclamation Service. Dr. and Mrs. Davis had four daughters, Rena, Florence, Dorothy, and Elizabeth. Mrs. Davis was a member of the American Mathematical Society, Circolo Matematico di Palermo, and the Auxiliary Board of Regents of Trinity College. Mrs. Davis was listed as both an assistant, and a pieceworker for the NAO in the annual reports of the observatory. She did other miscellaneous work on comet orbits, and proof-reading of textbooks on mathematics. She enjoyed writing magazine articles on mathematical subjects.
Mrs. Davis died on April 13, 1917. She was buried at Rock Creek Cemetery.
Her publications include:
Elements of Comet 1888I. Sidereal Messenger, 7 (1888) p. 352.
Elements of Comet e1891 (Barnard). Astronomical Journal, 11 (1892) p. 119.
Relating to an extension of Wilson's Theorem. American Mathematics
Monthly, 1917 Vol. 24 p. 95-96.