Hilda Phoebe Hudson (11 June 1881 Cambridge – 26 November 1965 London) was an English mathematician who worked on algebraic geometry, in particular on Cremona transformations. Hudson was interested in the link between mathematics and her religious beliefs.

Life and work

In 1900 Hudson gained a scholarship and entered

Newnham College Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millicent ...

at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, graduating in 1903, coming 7th equal among the First Class students. After a year of further study at the

University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...

, she returned to Newnham in 1905, first as lecturer in mathematics and later as Associate Research Fellow.

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

awarded her an ad eundam MA, and later a DSc, in 1906 and 1913, respectively. She was an Invited Speaker of the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rename ...

(ICM) in 1912 at Cambridge UK. Although Laura Pisati had been invited to the 1908 ICM, she died just before the start of the conference, so Hudson became the first female invited speaker at an ICM. She spent the academic year 1912–1913 at Bryn Mawr in the US, and the years 1913–1917 back in England, this time as lecturer at West Ham Technical Institute. She joined an Air Ministry subdivision undertaking

aeronautical engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: Aeronautics, aeronautical engineering and Astronautics, astronautical engineering. A ...

research in 1917, where she applied pioneering work on the application of

mathematical modelling A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling. Mathematical models are used in the natural sciences (such as physics, ...

to aircraft design. She was appointed OBE in 1919. As a distinguished mathematician she was one of the few women of her time to serve on the council of the

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh Mathematical S ...

. Most of Hudson's pure mathematical research was concerned with surfaces and plane curves, her special interest being in Cremona transformations. Her 1916 monograph ''Ruler and Compasses'' was well-received as "a welcome addition to the literature on the boundary between elementary and advanced mathematics". Her 454-page 1927 treatise ''Cremona transformations in plane and space'' is considered by John Semple to be her magnum opus.

Epidemiology

Hudson published work with

Ronald Ross Sir Ronald Ross (13 May 1857 – 16 September 1932) was a British medical doctor who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work on the transmission of malaria, becoming the first British Nobel laureate, and the ...

on epidemiology and the measurement of disease spread. "The classical susceptible-infectious-recovered (SIR) model, originated from the seminal papers of Ross and Ross and Hudson in 1916-1917 and the fundamental contributions of Kermack and McKendrick in 1927-1932, describes the transmission of infectious diseases between susceptible and infective individuals and provides the basic framework for almost all later epidemic models."

Books

*
Ruler and Compasses
', first published as a monograph (Longman's Modern Mathematical Series, 1916) and then included in the compendium ''Squaring the circle and other monographs'' (Chelsea n.d.) *

', Cambridge University Press, 1927.

References

External links

* * *A list of her papers can be found a

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hudson, Hilda Phoebe 1881 births 1965 deaths English mathematicians People from Cambridge Women mathematicians English women non-fiction writers English non-fiction writers 20th-century English women writers 20th-century English non-fiction writers British women engineers 20th-century women engineers Steamboat ladies