31 July 2021
I've been researching a local mid-C19 school (Halbrake College) on what's now called Elsynge Road (then called Park Road). It was run by one of the stoutest defenders of the Common in the 1860s / early 1870s, John Conder.
One of the students at the school was Ronald Hudson, a fine mathematician who died in his prime in a climbing accident in Snowdonia
As I was looking further into his background (to try to explain why he was studying at Halbrake), I came to realise that his father was professor of mathematics at King's College London - and in 1901 he was living nearby - on Altenburg Gardens - with several daughters:
1901 Census / 15 Altenburg Gardens, Battersea [house numbers may have changed since]
William HH Hudson 62 Professor of Mathematics [at King's College London]
Winifred 22 is at Newnham College
Edith 20 at Holloway College
Hilda 19 is a student at Newnham
[https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/7814/images/LNDRG13_455_457-0777?pId=21165340]
So two of these daughters were at Newnham at this time - and it turns out that they too were super brilliant mathematicians.
(And indeed that their mother (recently deceased, I think) had herself been a mathematician at Newnham.)'
Hilda Phoebe Hudson OBE (1881-1965) eclipsed them all:''
- the first woman to be invited to lecture to the International Congress of Mathematicians (1912).
- her OBE came in 1919 for pioneering the mathematical modelling of air flows over aeroplane wings.
- she developed (with Ronald Ross, the Nobel Laureate for his work on malaria) ) the maths that still underlies the modelling of epidemic diseases.
So v. topical.
Interesting, huh?
Def. needs a plaque!
_______________'
Here are some links:'
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Ruler and Compasses:
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Probate - she was living at St Marys Convent Burlington Lane London W4 [I think she was very religious - I've seen refs to her striving to harmonise maths and religion).