Mary Bradburn FRAS (1918–2000)[1][2] was a British mathematics educator who became president of the Mathematical Association for the 1994–1995 term.[3][1]
Bradburn was born on 17 March 1918 in NormanbyinNorth Yorkshire, the daughter of a marine engineer and a Scotswoman.[2][4] She attended a school that didn't approve of girls studying mathematics, but allowed her to progress through the mathematics curriculum at her own rate, several years ahead of the other students.[4]
She earned a state scholarship, but at 17, she was below the required age for Oxford and Cambridge, so she ended up going to Royal Holloway College.[2][4] She was a student there beginning in 1935 and, despite multiple extracurricular activities, earned first class honours in mathematics in 1938, and completed a master's degree there in 1940.[2]
With another scholarship from the University of London, she went to the University of Edinburgh for graduate study with Max Born, beginning in 1941; her dissertation was The Statistical Thermodynamics of Crystal Lattices.[2] She taught briefly at Edinburgh and the University of Dundee before returning to Royal Holloway as an instructor in 1945. She remained at Royal Holloway through its 1965 transition from a women's college to a coeducational one (a change that she supported), until her retirement in 1980.[2][4]
She became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1955.[1] The mathematics department of Royal Holloway offers an annual prize to undergraduates, the Mary Bradburn Prize, named in her memory.[5] The British Federation of Women Graduates also offers a Mary Bradburn Prize, from a bequest left by Bradburn.[6]
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