Kathleen Ollerenshaw
Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw DBE | |
---|---|
Born | Kathleen Mary Timpson 1 October 1912 Withington, Manchester, England |
Died | 10 August 2014 Didsbury, England | (aged 101)
Alma mater | Somerville College, Oxford |
Spouse |
Robert Ollerenshaw
(m. 1939; died 1986) |
Children | 2 |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Magic square Lattices |
Institutions | University of Manchester |
Thesis | (1945) |
Doctoral advisor | Theodore William Chaundy |
Dame Kathleen Mary Ollerenshaw,
Early life and education
She was born Kathleen Mary Timpson in Withington, Manchester, where she attended Lady Barn House School (1918–26).[1] She was a grandchild of the founder of the Timpson shoe repair business, who had moved to Manchester from Kettering and established the business there by 1870.[2] She became fascinated with mathematics, inspired by the Lady Barn headmistress, Miss Jenkin Jones. While at Lady Barn, she met her future husband, Robert Ollerenshaw.
Ollerenshaw became completely
As a young woman, she attended St Leonards School and Sixth Form College in St Andrews, Scotland where today the house of young male boarders is named after her. At the age of 19 she gained admittance to Somerville College, Oxford, to study mathematics. She completed her doctorate at Somerville in 1945 on "Critical Lattices" under the supervision of Theo Chaundy. She wrote five original research papers which were sufficient for her to earn her DPhil degree without the need of a formal written thesis.[4]
While an undergraduate, she became engaged to Robert Ollerenshaw, who became a distinguished military surgeon (Colonel R.G.W. Ollerenshaw, ERD, TD, BM, DMRD)[5][6][7] and a pioneer of medical illustration. They married in September 1939 and had two children, Charles (1941–99) and Florence (1946–72). In 1942 she suffered a miscarriage and "cried nonstop for three days" as a result of stress when her husband was posted abroad for front-line war service.[8]
Career
After the Second World War, the Ollerenshaws moved to Manchester, where Kathleen worked as a part-time lecturer in the
Outside of academia, Ollerenshaw served as a Conservative Councillor for Rusholme for twenty-five years (1954–79), a member of the city council's finance committee (1968–71), a chairman of the education committee of the Association of Municipal Corporations (1967–71), Lord Mayor of Manchester (1975–76), High Sheriff of Greater Manchester from 1978 to 1979, and the prime motivator in the creation of the Royal Northern College of Music. She was made a Freeman of the City of Manchester and was an advisor on educational matters to Margaret Thatcher's government in the 1980s.
She was President of the
An amateur astronomer, Ollerenshaw donated her telescope to Lancaster University, and an observatory there bears her name. She was an honorary member of the Manchester Astronomical Society and held the post of vice-president for a number of years.
Ollerenshaw attended St Leonards School in St Andrews, Fife, and served as the school's president from 1981 to 2003. She was succeeded by Baroness Byford, Conservative spokeswoman in the House of Lords. She turned 100 in October 2012.[12]
She died in Didsbury on 10 August 2014, at the age of 101.[13] Her husband and both their children had predeceased her.
Honours and legacy
- In 1970, Ollerenshaw was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to education.
- Composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies dedicated his Naxos Quartet No.9 to her.[14]
References
- ^ Clarke, Norman (12 August 2014). "Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw obituary". The Guardian.
- ^ Ollerenshaw, Kathleen (1982). Manchester Memoirs. E. J. Morton. p. 6.
- ^ "Kathleen Ollerenshaw - Biography". Maths History. Retrieved 5 March 2022.
- ^ Dame Kathleen Timpson Ollerenshaw, Biographies of Women Mathematicians, online at Agnes Scott College site
- ^ "Supplement to the London Gazette" (PDF). Thegazette.co.uk. 28 January 1955. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
- ^ "Supplement to the London Gazette" (PDF). Thegazette.co.uk. 15 July 1966. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
- ^ "Supplement to the London Gazette" (PDF). Thegazette.co.uk. 10 November 1944. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
- Nature Publishing Group. 18 September 2012.
- ^ "IMA Presidents". Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. 2014. Retrieved 4 August 2014.
- ^ "Category : Publications". ima.org.uk. 12 April 2023.
- ^ "Ollerenshaw lectures – The University of Manchester – School of Mathematics". University of Manchester.
- ^ "The 2012 Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Lecture". News. University of Manchester. 3 October 2012. Retrieved 3 October 2012.
- ^ Emma Flanagan (12 August 2014). "Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw former Lord Mayor of Manchester dies aged 101". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
- ^ "DAVIES, P.M.: Naxos Quartets Nos. 9 and 10 (Maggini Quartet) - 8.557400". Naxos.com. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
Bibliography
- Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw, To Talk of Many Things: an autobiography, Manchester Univ Press, 2004, ISBN 0-7190-6987-4
- Kathleen Ollerenshaw, David S. Brée: Most-perfect Pandiagonal Magic Squares: their construction and enumeration, Southend-on-Sea: Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, 1998, 186 pages, ISBN 0-905091-06-X
- Kathleen Ollerenshaw, Herman Bondi, Magic Squares of Order Four, Scholium Intl, 1983, ISBN 0-85403-201-0
- Kathleen Ollerenshaw, First Citizen, Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1977, ISBN 0-246-10976-9
- K. M. Ollerenshaw; D. S. Brée, "Most-perfect pandiagonal magic squares", in: Mathematics Today, 1998, vol. 34, pp. 139–143. ISSN 1361-2042.
- D. S. Brée and K. M. Ollerenshaw, "Pandiagonal magic-squares from mixed auxiliary squares", in: Mathematics Today, 1998, vol. 34, pp. 105–118. ISSN 1361-2042.
- Kathleen Ollerenshaw. 1944 The Critical Lattices of a Square Frame. Journal of the London Mathematical Society 19:75 part 3, pp. 178–184, The Critical Lattices of a Square Frame
External links
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Kathleen Ollerenshaw", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
- Kathleen Ollerenshaw at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- Portraits of Kathleen Ollerenshaw at the National Portrait Gallery, London
- Interview on BBC Radio 4
- Manchester Politicians, with biographical sketch
- The Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Observatory at Lancaster University
- The Manchester Astronomical Society