Lorna Swain facts for kids

Lorna Mary Swain (born March 22, 1891 – died May 8, 1936) was a British mathematician and university teacher. She was known for being one of the few women who used their math skills to help during World War I. She was also one of the first female lecturers at the University of Cambridge. Lorna Swain was famous for her work in fluid dynamics, which is the study of how liquids and gases move. She also strongly wanted more women to study and teach math.

Early Life

Lorna Swain was born on March 22, 1891. Her father, Edward Swain, was a lawyer. Her mother was Mary Isabella Swain.

Education

Lorna went to South Hampstead High School in London. In 1910, she won a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge. Three years later, she graduated with top grades in mathematics. After graduating, she planned to be an assistant lecturer at Newnham College. First, she wanted to spend a year doing research in Göttingen, Germany, in 1914.

Career

Lorna's plans to do research in Göttingen, Germany, changed when World War I started in 1914. Because she could not go to Germany, Lorna used her skills in fluid dynamics in Manchester. There, she worked with a scientist named Horace Lamb. They wrote her first academic paper together.

When she returned to Newnham College, the war made her focus her research on a new problem. She studied how airplane propellers vibrated. This was a big problem for planes used in World War I. Her work during this time was very helpful. It was also special because few women had their names on important reports about aircraft back then. She wrote a report with her colleague H.A. Webb for the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

In 1923, after returning to Newnham, she published another paper. It was about how a cylinder moves through a thick liquid. This paper was in a famous science journal called the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Later, in 1928-1929, she finally got to do her research in Göttingen. From this research, she wrote about how air moves behind a spinning object. This work was also published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in 1929.

By 1920, Lorna Swain became the Director of Mathematics Studies at Newnham. This meant she had more teaching and office work, which made it harder to do her own research. However, she used this position to help with her passion for education. She was worried that not enough women were studying mathematics. She also cared about teaching applied mathematics, which is math used to solve real-world problems. She believed good teaching could help students enjoy math and avoid finding it boring.

In 1926, Lorna was promoted to College Lecturer at Newnham. She went back to teaching and research. She taught advanced classes on how things move in water and air.

Death

Lorna Swain died on May 8, 1936, after being ill for a long time. She passed away at a nursing home in Hendon, London. Her funeral was held on May 13, 1936, at Golders Green Crematorium.