Elizabeth Adam McHarg (22 April 1923 – 29 April 1999) was a Scottish mathematician who in 1965 became the first female president of the

Edinburgh Mathematical Society The Edinburgh Mathematical Society is a mathematical society for academics in Scotland. History The Society was founded in 1883 by a group of Edinburgh school teachers and academics, on the initiative of Alexander Yule Fraser FRSE and Andrew Je ...

Education

McHarg studied at the

Glasgow High School for Girls The High School of Glasgow is an independent, co-educational day school in Glasgow, Scotland. The original High School of Glasgow was founded as the choir school of Glasgow Cathedral in around 1124, and is the oldest school in Scotland, and t ...

and then the

University of Glasgow , image = UofG Coat of Arms.png , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms Flag , latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis , motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita , ...

, earning a master's degree with first class honours in mathematics and natural philosophy in 1943. The university awarded her the Thomas Logan Medal and a George A Clark scholarship, funding her as a researcher at

Girton College, Cambridge Girton College is one of the 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. The college was established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon as the first women's college in Cambridge. In 1948, it was granted full college status ...

. At Girton, she studied

nonlinear partial differential equation In mathematics and physics, a nonlinear partial differential equation is a partial differential equation with nonlinear system, nonlinear terms. They describe many different physical systems, ranging from gravitation to fluid dynamics, and have be ...

s with

Mary Cartwright Dame Mary Lucy Cartwright, (17 December 1900 – 3 April 1998) was a British mathematician. She was one of the pioneers of what would later become known as chaos theory. Along with J. E. Littlewood, Cartwright saw many solutions to a problem ...

, and completed her Ph.D. in 1948.

Career and contributions

McHarg returned to the University of Glasgow as a lecturer in 1948. There, she became an expert in

special functions Special functions are particular mathematical functions that have more or less established names and notations due to their importance in mathematical analysis, functional analysis, geometry, physics, or other applications. The term is defined by ...

. She also translated the text ''Differential Equations'' by

Francesco Tricomi Francesco Giacomo Tricomi (5 May 1897 – 21 November 1978) was an Italian people, Italian mathematician famous for his studies on mixed type partial differential equations. He was also the author of a book on integral equations. Biography Trico ...

from

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

into English; her translation was published in 1961 by Hafner and republished in 2012 by Dover Publications.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McHarg, Elizabeth 1923 births 1999 deaths 20th-century Scottish mathematicians British women mathematicians Alumni of the University of Glasgow Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge Academics of the University of Glasgow Italian–English translators 20th-century translators Technical translators 20th-century women mathematicians