Eleanor Pairman facts for kids

Eleanor "Nora" Pairman was a brilliant Scottish mathematician. She was born on June 8, 1896, and passed away on September 14, 1973. Nora made history as only the third woman to earn a special math degree called a doctorate from Radcliffe College in Massachusetts. Later in her life, she created amazing new ways to teach math to students who were blind.

Nora's Early Life and Studies

Nora Pairman was the youngest of four children. She was born in a place called Broomieknowe, Lasswade, in Scotland. Her father was a lawyer, but he passed away when Nora was very young.

Nora went to Lasswade Higher Grade School and then to George Watson's Ladies' College. In 1914, after finishing her exams, she started studying mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. She was a fantastic student! She earned a special degree in math and natural philosophy in 1917. Because she did so well, she received a scholarship that allowed her to continue her studies at any university she chose.

She started her advanced studies at the University of Edinburgh. Then, in 1918, she moved to University College London to work in a lab with a famous scientist named Karl Pearson. Nora even presented two papers at meetings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society that year.

Studying in America

One of Nora's teachers wrote a letter saying she had "every promise of a distinguished and useful career." In 1919, Nora traveled to New York and then to Cambridge, Massachusetts. There, she studied at Radcliffe College. This was a college just for women, but it worked closely with the all-male Harvard College.

At Radcliffe, Nora studied with another important mathematician, George David Birkhoff. She worked very hard on her special research paper, called a thesis. It was titled Expansion Theorems for Solution of a Fredholm's Linear Homogeneous Integral Equation of the Second Kind with Kernel of Special Non-Symmetric Type. In 1922, she earned her PhD, which is the highest degree you can get in a subject. This was a big achievement! She was only the third woman ever to get a math PhD from Radcliffe College.

In the same year, Nora married Bancroft Brown, who was also a student working on his advanced degree.

Life and Teaching at Dartmouth

After they got married, Nora and Bancroft moved to Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1922. Bancroft started teaching at Dartmouth College. At that time, Dartmouth was a college only for men, and all the teachers were men too. However, sometimes women could study there for their advanced degrees.

Later, in 1927, Nora published a math paper with another person named Rudolph E. Langer. Much later, from 1955 to 1959, Nora taught math part-time at Dartmouth.

Teaching Math in Braille

Around 1950, Nora started focusing on a very special project: teaching mathematics to students who were blind. She learned Braille, which is a system of raised dots that blind people can read with their fingers. She also figured out how to create math diagrams that blind students could feel. She used her sewing machine and other things she found around her house!

Her daughter, Margaret, later explained how clever her mom was. She said that geometry was especially hard for blind students because it needs diagrams. Braille is usually on paper that feels like thin cardboard. So, Nora used things like pinking shears (special scissors) and pastry wheels (for baking) to make diagrams that students could feel. Margaret said, "Apparently nobody had ever done this before."

Nora's son-in-law, Thomas Streeter, once saw her work. He said that a blind student at Harvard needed a math book put into Braille. The book had many math symbols. Nora's solution? Her sewing machine! She would write down the math and then use her sewing machine to "sew" the symbols onto the Braille paper. She had to make sure it was a mirror image so it would be correct when read.

Around 1959, a local newspaper, the Hanover Gazette, wrote an article about Nora. It said she was busy turning two math books into Braille. One was for a new student at Boston College, and the other was a very advanced book for a student at Columbia University in New York. The article also mentioned that she met with Dartmouth math students for three hours every week. It seemed she even took over teaching the course by the end of that school year!

Nora's daughter Margaret later wrote that even though her mom found great satisfaction in these Braille projects, she was truly happiest when she was teaching. Margaret felt that Nora didn't get enough chances to teach professionally. This was because she was a woman in a time when it was hard for married women to have careers, especially in a college that was mostly for men.

Nora's Family Life

On August 10, 1922, Nora Pairman married Bancroft Huntington Brown in Scotland. After they married, she became known as Eleanor P. Brown or Nora Brown. Her husband also earned his PhD in 1922.

Nora and Bancroft had four children: John Pairman (born 1923), Barbara (1925-1979), Joanna (who sadly passed away as a baby in 1935), and Margaret Wylde (born 1937). Nora was proud that her two surviving children, John and Margaret, both went on to earn their own doctorates.

Nora passed away on September 14, 1973, at the age of 77, after a long illness. She was in White River Junction, Vermont. She was survived by her husband, two sisters, three children, seven grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter. Her husband passed away the following year.