Remembering Miss L

Back when I was a postgrad (which I failed at dismally due to rather a lot of other things, including a simultaneous crisis of self-confidence, disappearing supervisor, and major glandular fever infection), there was only one female lecturer in the Maths dept where I worked. She was the only member of the faculty not to have a PhD. As far as I could tell, she'd started as a research assistant, and sort of quietly made herself part of the department without anyone really noticing. The culture was very male dominated when I was there, so I can only imagine how difficult it must of been for her 40 or so years before. She wasn't my supervisor, but I did a bit of teaching (I think) work with her, and she was always very encouraging, and pointed me at women in mathematics conference days and the like. I don't think she ever did anything particularly earth shattering mathematically, but I was grateful to have her there as a friend, and someone who'd blazed the trail when the very idea of women doing mathematics was considered absurd by the mainstream. Thank you, SL, for being you.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day.