Evelyn Boyd Granville, Born May 1, 1924 in Washington, D.C. and attended Dunbar High School, a segregated high school at the time. Her interest in mathematics was encouraged by two mathematics teachers. Granville worked with Einar Hille, a distinguished mathematician in the field of functional analysis, as her Ph.D. faculty advisor at Yale University. She received a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Yale in 1949.

Following her graduation from Yale Evelyn Granville spent a year as a research assistant at the New York University Institute of Mathematics and part-time instructor in the mathematics department of New York University (NYU). Professor Granville was then appointed as Associate Professor of Mathematics at Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee from 1950-1952.