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Florence Newman Trefethen

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Florence Marion Newman Trefethen (1921–2012) was an American codebreaker, historian of operations research, poet, and English professor.

Early life and education

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Florence Marion Newman was born in 1921, in Philadelphia.[1] She graduated magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College in 1943.[2]

She enlisted as a Naval officer during World War II, and served in the WAVES as a codebreaker. She was part of the Magic project, whose decryptions of Japanese communications led to the ambush and death of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.[1][3] During this service she met Merchant Marine and later mechanical engineer Lloyd M. Trefethen;[3] they married in 1944.[4]

After the war, she came to Girton College, Cambridge on an Ottilie Hancock Bye Fellowship. She earned a Master of Letters there in 1946.[1]

Career and later life

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Trefethen was for many years a professor of English at Tufts University,[3] and served for 18 years as executive editor for the Council of East Asian Studies at Harvard University.[1]

She and her husband had had two children, quilter Gwyned Trefethen in 1953 and mathematician Lloyd N. Trefethen in 1955.[1][5] She died on March 1, 2012.[1]

Books

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With Joseph F. McCloskey, Trefethen edited the book Operations Research for Management (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954).[6] She wrote the first chapter of the book, an early history of the field of operations research.[7]

She is also the author of Writing a Poem (The Writer, 1970), on the process of writing poetry.[8]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f "Trefethen", The Annual Review of Girton College, 2012, 2013, p. 97
  2. ^ "Graduate and undergraduate degrees are conferred", The College News, vol. 29, no. 25, p. 3, June 8, 1943
  3. ^ a b c Gittleman, Sol (November 11, 2013), "The Quiet Men: Sol Gittleman, the university's former provost, remembers Tufts' postwar veteran-professors, the unsung heroes of academia", Tufts Now
  4. ^ Astill, Ken; Nelson, Fred; Humphrey, Joseph A. C. (1999), "Dedication to Lloyd MacGregor Trefethen on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday", Journal of Fluids Engineering, 121 (1), {ASME} International: 3, doi:10.1115/1.2822008
  5. ^ "Trefethen, Prof. Lloyd Nicholas, (Nick)", Who's Who 2019, Oxford University Press, 2019, doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U37988
  6. ^ Review of Operations Research for Management:
  7. ^ The origins of OR, INFORMS, retrieved 2019-05-11
  8. ^ Reviews of Writing a Poem: