Mary Murphy was intimately aware of the workings of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) during its middle years. She was born in Iowa City, Iowa in 1905 and became in 1930 the first woman in Iowa to earn the CPA certificate (certificate number 67). Murphy earned her bachelor's degree in accountancy in 1927 from The University of Iowa, her master's in 1928 from Columbia University, and, when she graduated from The London School of Economics and Political Science in 1938, she became the second American woman to earn a doctorate in accounting (Previts, Flesher, and Sharp 2007).
Murphy began working for Lybrand, Ross Bros. & Montgomery in New York City in 1928, and later chaired the Department of Commerce of St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. After three years at St. Mary's, Murphy moved back to New York to serve as an assistant professor...
