The Independent (London)
December 22, 1999, Wednesday
HEADLINE: OBITUARY:
BERTHA JEFFREYS
BYLINE: R M Williams
BERTHA SWIRLES, Lady Jeffreys, did important research on quantum theory,
particularly in its early days, and her association with Girton College,
Cambridge, as student and Fellow, spanned more than 70 years.
Born in Northampton in 1903, she was involved in the world of education from
her earliest days. Her widowed mother was a primary-school teacher and various
aunts were also teachers. She attended Northampton School for Girls and then
went up to Girton, in 1921, to read Mathematics, graduating with first class
Honours.
She became a research student of R.H. Fowler, one of a distinguished company
of his students which included several Nobel prizewinners such as P.A.M. Dirac
and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. She spent the winter semester of 1927-28 in
Gottingen, where she worked under Max Born and Werner Heisenberg and interacted
with many of the other leading continental workers in the relatively new field
of quantum mechanics; it was an exciting time.
By the time she was awarded her PhD in 1929, she was already an Assistant
Lecturer in Manchester. This was followed by similar appointments in Bristol
and at Imperial College, London, and then in 1933 she returned to Manchester as
a Lecturer in Applied Mathematics. Douglas Hartree at Manchester was extremely
sorry to lose such a valued colleague when she returned to Cambridge in 1938,
to an Official Fellowship and Lectureship in Mathematics at
Girton.
In Cambridge, Bertha Swirles continued to publish important papers on quantum
theory, but her most widely known publication is the enormously influential
text Methods of Mathematical Physics, written with Harold Jeffreys, whom she
had married in 1940. It was first published in 1946 and, after many editions
and revisions, it was reprinted a few weeks ago, with a delightful picture of
Bertha and Harold on the back cover. It has educated many generations of
students and is still a recommended text for several undergraduate mathematics
courses in Cambridge today. The book covers a huge amount of material and is
written with great clarity (and even humour, in the choice of quotations at the
start of each chapter). It was the fruit of many years of work.
Subsequently Bertha Jeffreys's research interests broadened to include
seismology
in collaboration with her husband, who was by then Plumian Professor of
Astronomy at Cambridge. He was knighted in 1953. Theirs was a long and happy
marriage, the main bone of contention seeming to be whether he should still be
cycling in his shorts in his eighties. He died in 1989 when he was almost 98.
Bertha felt an immense loyalty to Girton and played a very active role there,
holding a large variety of college offices at various times, including that of
Vice-Mistress from 1966 to 1969. She will perhaps be remembered most in her
capacity of Director of Studies in Mathematics, a post she held from 1949 to
1969. This involved selecting, advising and teaching generations of women
mathematicians, who have themselves gone on to propagate her influence to ever
wider circles. Her supervisions were informative, stimulating and enjoyable
(even when the students was referred firmly to Fowler's Use of English) and she
had an intuitive sense of the
particular difficulties each individual faced.
She took a personal and warm interest in all her students and there was often
"open house" for them on Sunday evenings at the Jeffreys residence halfway between Girton
and the centre of Cambridge. Her interest did not cease when students left
Cambridge; she and Harold had no children, but there was an enormous extended
family based on her former pupils. She had an amazing memory for the details of
their lives. When their children and grandchildren arrived in Cambridge as
students themselves, they would be invited to tea. This used to involve
sampling Bertha's homemade flapjack whilst Sir Harold sat on the floor doing
the Times crossword. Many a younger child received an imaginatively chosen
birthday gift from Auntie Bertha.
Not suffering fools gladly made Bertha Jeffreys seem a little formidable to
some. She
set the highest standards for herself and expected others to do the same. Her
advice was never stereotyped; she approached each problem with an open mind,
coupled with sensitivity and an enormous amount of common sense. Although she
was sometimes a little irritated by activities for women mathematicians,
feeling that progress would come from women doing good mathematics rather than
spending time pondering their difficulties, she was always extremely supportive
of individuals.
Music was an important part of her life. She was an accomplished pianist and
cellist, and still played piano duets with a friend in her nineties, when she
also still regularly attended concerts in college and at Kettle's Yard.
Bertha Jeffreys played a leading role in women's education this century, and
she inspired students of mathematics world-wide. It is a pity that only after
her husband's death did she receive honorary
doctorates, from the University of Saskatchewan in 1995 and the Open University
in 1996. This recognition of her would have given him great pleasure.
Her colleagues, pupils and friends will miss her wisdom and her generosity,
her
"unstuffy" approach to life and her sense of fun. Her 90th birthday lunch was attended by
about 140 of her former pupils and colleagues from several continents, a
fitting tribute to a very special teacher and friend.
R. M. Williams
Bertha Swirles, mathematician: born Northampton 22 May 1903; Fellow, Girton
College, Cambridge 1938-69 (Life Fellow 1969), Director of Studies in
Mathematics 1949-69, Vice-Mistress 1966-69; married 1940 Harold Jeffreys (Kt
1953, died 1989); died Cambridge 18 December 1999.