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Grace Chisholm Young
Grace Chisholm Young (née Chisholm, 15 March 1868 – 29 March 1944) was an English mathematician. She was educated at Girton College, Cambridge, England and continued her studies at Göttingen University in Germany, where in 1895 she received a doctorate. Her early writings were published under the name of her husband, William Henry Young, and they collaborated on mathematical work throughout their lives. She was awarded the Gamble Prize for Mathematics by Girton College in 1915 for her work on calculus.
Grace Chisholm was born on 15 March 1868 to Anna Louisa Bell and Henry Williams Chisholm. She was the youngest of four children. One of her brothers was the journalist and the editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Hugh Chisholm. Her father was a senior civil servant, with the title Warden of the Standards in charge of the Weights and Measures Department. Shortly before her father's retirement in 1877, the family settled in Haslemere. Up until the age of 10, Chisholm's was taught by her mother at home. From the age of 10, a governess was engaged for her. She passed the Cambridge Senior Examination in December 1885. Her family encouraged her to pursue social work amongst the poor in London. Chisholm wished to pursue further education; although she wanted to study medicine, her mother would not permit this, so, supported by her father, she decided to study mathematics.
Chisholm entered Girton College in 1889, four years after she passed the Cambridge Senior Examination, having been awarded the Sir Francis Goldsmid Scholarship by the college. At that time, Girton was not a constituent college of the University of Cambridge but was associated with it, with men and women graded on separate but related lists. At the end of her first year, when the Mays list came out, she was top of the Second class immediately below Isabel Maddison.[citation needed]
In 1892, Chisholm passed Part 1 of her final examinations with the equivalent of a first-class degree, ranked between 23 and 24 relative to 112 men. She also took (unofficially, on a challenge, with Isabel Maddison) the examinations for the Final Honours School in mathematics at the University of Oxford in 1892 in which she out-performed all the Oxford students. As a result, she became the first person to obtain a First class degree at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities in any subject (although they were not awarded formally).
Chisholm remained at Cambridge for an additional year to complete Part II of the Mathematical Tripos, in the hope of being able to follow an academic career.
She wanted to continue her studies and since women were not yet admitted to graduate schools in England she went to the University of Göttingen in Germany to study with Felix Klein. This was one of the major mathematical centres in the world. She had already learnt the German language. The decision to admit her had to be approved by the Berlin Ministry of Culture and was part of an experiment in admitting women to university studies. In 1895, at the age of 27, Chisholm was awarded a doctorate in mathematics. Again, government approval had to be obtained to allow her to take the examination, which consisted of probing questions by several professors on topics such as geometry, differential equations, physics, astronomy, and the area of her dissertation, all in German. She was also required to take courses demonstrating a broader knowledge, as well as to prepare a thesis which was entitled Algebraisch-gruppentheoretische Untersuchungen zur sphärischen Trigonometrie (Algebraic Groups of Spherical Trigonometry).
After returning to England in 1896, she resumed research she had initiated at Gӧttingen into an equation to determine the orbit of a comet. Her husband continued his work coaching in mathematics. However, in 1897 they both returned to Gӧttingen, encouraged by Felix Klein. Both attended advanced lectures and while she continued her mathematical research her husband started to work creatively for the first time. They visited Turin in Italy to study modern geometry and under Klein's guidance they began to work in the new area of set theory. From about 1901, the Youngs began to publish papers together. These concerned the theory of functions of a real variable and were heavily influenced by new ideas with which she had come into contact with in Gӧttingen. In 1908 they moved to Geneva in Switzerland where she continued to be based while her husband held a series of academic posts in India and the UK.[citation needed]
Although most of their work was published jointly, it is believed that Grace did much of the actual writing, and she also produced independent work which, according to expert opinion, was deeper and more important than her husband's. In total, they published 214 papers and four books. She began to publish in her own name in 1914, and was awarded the Gamble Prize for Mathematics by Girton College for an essay On infinite derivates in 1915. This work was stimulated by developments in microscopy that allowed real molecular motion to be viewed. Her work between 1914 and 1916 on relationships between derivatives of an arbitrary function contributed to the Denjoy-Young-Saks theorem.[citation needed]
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Grace Chisholm Young
Grace Chisholm Young (née Chisholm, 15 March 1868 – 29 March 1944) was an English mathematician. She was educated at Girton College, Cambridge, England and continued her studies at Göttingen University in Germany, where in 1895 she received a doctorate. Her early writings were published under the name of her husband, William Henry Young, and they collaborated on mathematical work throughout their lives. She was awarded the Gamble Prize for Mathematics by Girton College in 1915 for her work on calculus.
Grace Chisholm was born on 15 March 1868 to Anna Louisa Bell and Henry Williams Chisholm. She was the youngest of four children. One of her brothers was the journalist and the editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Hugh Chisholm. Her father was a senior civil servant, with the title Warden of the Standards in charge of the Weights and Measures Department. Shortly before her father's retirement in 1877, the family settled in Haslemere. Up until the age of 10, Chisholm's was taught by her mother at home. From the age of 10, a governess was engaged for her. She passed the Cambridge Senior Examination in December 1885. Her family encouraged her to pursue social work amongst the poor in London. Chisholm wished to pursue further education; although she wanted to study medicine, her mother would not permit this, so, supported by her father, she decided to study mathematics.
Chisholm entered Girton College in 1889, four years after she passed the Cambridge Senior Examination, having been awarded the Sir Francis Goldsmid Scholarship by the college. At that time, Girton was not a constituent college of the University of Cambridge but was associated with it, with men and women graded on separate but related lists. At the end of her first year, when the Mays list came out, she was top of the Second class immediately below Isabel Maddison.[citation needed]
In 1892, Chisholm passed Part 1 of her final examinations with the equivalent of a first-class degree, ranked between 23 and 24 relative to 112 men. She also took (unofficially, on a challenge, with Isabel Maddison) the examinations for the Final Honours School in mathematics at the University of Oxford in 1892 in which she out-performed all the Oxford students. As a result, she became the first person to obtain a First class degree at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities in any subject (although they were not awarded formally).
Chisholm remained at Cambridge for an additional year to complete Part II of the Mathematical Tripos, in the hope of being able to follow an academic career.
She wanted to continue her studies and since women were not yet admitted to graduate schools in England she went to the University of Göttingen in Germany to study with Felix Klein. This was one of the major mathematical centres in the world. She had already learnt the German language. The decision to admit her had to be approved by the Berlin Ministry of Culture and was part of an experiment in admitting women to university studies. In 1895, at the age of 27, Chisholm was awarded a doctorate in mathematics. Again, government approval had to be obtained to allow her to take the examination, which consisted of probing questions by several professors on topics such as geometry, differential equations, physics, astronomy, and the area of her dissertation, all in German. She was also required to take courses demonstrating a broader knowledge, as well as to prepare a thesis which was entitled Algebraisch-gruppentheoretische Untersuchungen zur sphärischen Trigonometrie (Algebraic Groups of Spherical Trigonometry).
After returning to England in 1896, she resumed research she had initiated at Gӧttingen into an equation to determine the orbit of a comet. Her husband continued his work coaching in mathematics. However, in 1897 they both returned to Gӧttingen, encouraged by Felix Klein. Both attended advanced lectures and while she continued her mathematical research her husband started to work creatively for the first time. They visited Turin in Italy to study modern geometry and under Klein's guidance they began to work in the new area of set theory. From about 1901, the Youngs began to publish papers together. These concerned the theory of functions of a real variable and were heavily influenced by new ideas with which she had come into contact with in Gӧttingen. In 1908 they moved to Geneva in Switzerland where she continued to be based while her husband held a series of academic posts in India and the UK.[citation needed]
Although most of their work was published jointly, it is believed that Grace did much of the actual writing, and she also produced independent work which, according to expert opinion, was deeper and more important than her husband's. In total, they published 214 papers and four books. She began to publish in her own name in 1914, and was awarded the Gamble Prize for Mathematics by Girton College for an essay On infinite derivates in 1915. This work was stimulated by developments in microscopy that allowed real molecular motion to be viewed. Her work between 1914 and 1916 on relationships between derivatives of an arbitrary function contributed to the Denjoy-Young-Saks theorem.[citation needed]