Woman into Mathematician:1 The opening of university mathematical education to women in the British Isles: a prosopographical note

O nly when university education is fully open to ‘women on equal terms with men’ is it proper to say that it is possible for (almost) everybody to study mathematics to whatever level they can attain. Unfortunately, there has not yet been an account of the beginnings of comprehensive university education for women in the British Isles: accordingly, we will use the narrower range of material available in the meantime. The whole of the British Isles has been included in the Davis Historical Archive, a survey of women mathematical graduates 1878–1940, and the result incorporated in the MacTutor Archive, and this will provide the data to enable us to make some comments on the situation in the first twenty-five years. (The ramifications of a social background with many common features will probably apply to all women university graduates but can at present be justified only with reference to the cohort who studied mathematics. And, while we are restricted by the data currently available, to discussing a particular university in England, the conclusions inferred will almost certainly apply in the same social context throughout the UK—and even, by anecdotal evidence, to prosperous middle-class daughters in the USA.) In earlier times, enthusiastic young men had always been able to find some way of learning mathematics—the only barrier would have been financial, and this was overcome partly by the gradual development of a network of evening classes and also, for practical mathematics, through the apprentice system. By contrast, mathematics tuition was hardly ever available for young women, unless they were fortunate enough to have a father, brother, or husband with mathematical skills who would spare the time to help them develop the necessary background (often in return for assistance with routine calculations). Formal university education (our present interest) became available to women only in the later part of the Victorian era. University College London was founded (1826) to provide freedom from religious constraint, and was the first institution to be incorporated into the University of London (1836). However, it was not until half a century later that the University freed itself from the limitations of single-sex blinkers and, in 1878, amended its Charter to become the first to admit women. Unfortunately no historian has yet tackled