Philippa Garrett Fawcett (4 April 1868 – 10 June 1948) was an English mathematician and educator. She was the first woman to obtain the top score in the Cambridge

Mathematical Tripos The Mathematical Tripos is the mathematics course that is taught in the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Origin In its classical nineteenth-century form, the tripos was a di ...

exams. She taught at

Newnham College, Cambridge 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 Millicen ...

, and at the normal school (teacher training college) in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alon ...

, and she became an administrator for the

London County Council The London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today ...

Family

Philippa Garrett Fawcett was born on 4 April 1868, the daughter of the

suffragist Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to vo ...

Millicent Fawcett Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett (; 11 June 1847 – 5 August 1929) was an English political activist and writer. She campaigned for Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, women's suffrage by Law reform, legal change and in 1897–1919 led Brita ...

(née Garrett) and

Henry Fawcett Henry Fawcett (26 August 1833 – 6 November 1884) was a British academic, politician, statesman and economist. Background and education Henry Fawcett was born in Salisbury where his father was a gentleman farmer. He was educated at the A ...

MP, Professor of

Political Economy Political or comparative economy is a branch of political science and economics studying economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and national economies) and their governance by political systems (e.g. law, institutions, and government). Wi ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

and

Postmaster General A Postmaster General, in Anglosphere countries, is the chief executive officer of the postal service of that country, a ministerial office responsible for overseeing all other postmasters. History The practice of having a government official ...

in Gladstone's second government. Her aunt was Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first English female doctor. When her father died, she and her mother went to live with Millicent's sister Agnes Garrett, who had set up an interior design business on Gower Street,

Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London, part of the London Borough of Camden in England. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural institution, cultural, intellectual, and educational ...

Education

Philippa Fawcett was educated at

Bedford College, London Bedford College was founded in London in 1849 as the first higher education college for women in the United Kingdom. In 1900, it became a constituent of the University of London. Having played a leading role in the advancement of women in highe ...

(now

Royal Holloway Royal Holloway, University of London (RH), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public university, public research university and a constituent college, member institution of the federal University of London. It ...

) and

which had been co-founded by her mother. In 1890, she became the first woman to obtain the top score in the Cambridge

exams. The results were highly publicised, with the top scorers receiving great acclaim. Her score was 13% higher than the second highest, but she did not receive the title of

Senior Wrangler The Senior Wrangler is the top mathematics undergraduate at the University of Cambridge in England, a position which has been described as "the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain". Specifically, it is the person who achiev ...

( Geoffrey T. Bennett in 1890), as only men were then ranked and women were listed separately. Women had been allowed to take the Tripos since 1880, after Charlotte Angas Scott was unofficially ranked as eighth wrangler. When the women's list was announced, Fawcett was described as "above the senior wrangler". No woman was officially awarded the first position until Ruth Hendry in 1992. An anonymous poem written in 1890 paying tribute to Fawcett's great achievement climaxes with the following two stanzas, mentioning the other respected mathematicians

Arthur Cayley Arthur Cayley (; 16 August 1821 – 26 January 1895) was a British mathematician who worked mostly on algebra. He helped found the modern British school of pure mathematics, and was a professor at Trinity College, Cambridge for 35 years. He ...

and George Salmon:

Curve and angle let her con and Parallelopipedon and Parallelogram Few can equal, none can beat her At eliminating theta By the river Cam. May she increase in knowledge daily Till the great Professor Cayley Owns himself surpassed Till the great Professor Salmon Votes his own achievements gammon And admires aghast.

Coming amidst the

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...

movement, Fawcett's feat gathered worldwide media coverage, spurring much discussion about women's capacities and rights. The lead story in the ''

Telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...

'' the following day said:

Career

Philippa Fawcett in her room at Newnham College

Following Fawcett's achievement in the Tripos, she won the Marion Kennedy scholarship at

Marion Kennedy
Newnham College, Retrieved 22 June 2017 through which she conducted research in

fluid dynamics In physics, physical chemistry and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids – liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including (the study of air and other gases in motion ...

. Her published papers include "Note on the Motion of Solids in a Liquid". She was appointed a college lecturer in mathematics at Newnham College, a position she held for 10 years. In this capacity, her teaching abilities received considerable praise. One student wrote: Fawcett left Cambridge in 1902, when she was appointed as a lecturer to train mathematics teachers at the Normal School (teacher training college) in

, then in

Transvaal Colony The Transvaal Colony () was the name used to refer to the Transvaal region during the period of direct British rule and military occupation between the end of the Second Boer War in 1902 when the South African Republic was dissolved, and the ...

, now part of the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She remained there, setting up schools throughout the country, until 1905, when she returned to Britain to take a position in the administration of education for

. At the LCC, in her work developing

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

s, she attained a high rank. Denied a Cambridge degree by reason of her sex, she was one of the

steamboat ladies "Steamboat ladies" was an informal nickname given to a number of female students (estimated at around 720 graduates) at the women's colleges of the Universities of both Oxford and Cambridge, who were awarded University of Dublin degrees at Trini ...

who travelled to Ireland between 1904 and 1907 to receive an ''ad eundem'' University of Dublin degree at Trinity College. Fawcett maintained strong links with Newnham College throughout her life. The Fawcett building (1938) was named in recognition of her contribution to the college, and that of her family. She died in

Hendon Hendon is an urban area in the London Borough of Barnet, northwest London northwest of Charing Cross. Hendon was an ancient Manorialism, manor and parish in the county of Middlesex and a former borough, the Municipal Borough of Hendon; it has ...

on 10 June 1948, two months after her 80th birthday, a month after the Grace that allowed women to be awarded the Cambridge BA degree received royal assent (see women's education at the University of Cambridge).

Legacy

The Philippa Fawcett Internship Programme is a summer research program at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences in the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

. It received its first group of interns in 2020. On the

West Cambridge West Cambridge is a university site to the west of Cambridge city centre in England. As part of the ''West Cambridge Master Plan'', several of the University of Cambridge's departments have relocated to the West Cambridge site from the centre ...

site, there exists Philippa Fawcett Drive, alongside roads named after other notable contributors to

STEM subjects Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is an umbrella term used to group together the distinct but related technical disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The term is typically used in the context of ...

, such as

Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (''née'' Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), also known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-pur ...

Charles Babbage Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Babbage is considered ...

, and

J. J. Thomson Sir Joseph John Thomson (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940) was an English physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906 "in recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of ...

. The Philippa Fawcett Teaching College was named for her.

References

External links

The Woman Who Bested the Men at Math

Portrait of Phillipa Fawcett
at

William Morris Gallery The William Morris Gallery is a museum devoted to the life and works of William Morris, an English Arts and Crafts designer and early socialist. It is located in Walthamstow at Water House, a substantial Grade II* listed Georgian home. The extens ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fawcett, Philippa 1868 births 1948 deaths 19th-century English mathematicians 20th-century English mathematicians Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge Steamboat ladies 20th-century British women mathematicians 19th-century British women mathematicians