Florence Weldon
Florence Joy Weldon (née Tebb, 1858 – 1936) was an English mathematician who worked as "one of the first college-educated human computers,"[1] analysing data about biological variation.
Early life
[edit]Florence was the daughter of businessman and activist William Tebb. Her younger sister was physiologist Mary Tebb. In the early 1880s she studied mathematics at Girton College, Cambridge.[2] She married evolutionary biologist Raphael Weldon in March 1883.[3][4]
Computation
[edit]Florence joined with Weldon’s work on biological variation in shrimps and crabs. The pair travelled around England, Italy and the Bahamas, collecting about a thousand specimens at a time. Florence worked as Weldon’s chief computer in analysing the data collected by measuring the specimens.[5] With no calculating machines available, she used logarithms and Crelle tables.[1] One study involved taking twenty-three measurements each from a thousand shore crab specimens from the Bay of Naples, which demonstrated that twenty-two of the features measured were normally distributed and the other was bimodal.[6] Another study included taking measurements in duplicate from over eight thousand crabs.[7]
Florence’s contribution was acknowledged by her long-time friend and correspondent Karl Pearson, who completed her husband's manuscripts after his death.[6]
Art collection and legacy
[edit]In 1928, Florence received an honorary degree of Master of Arts from the University of Oxford after making a significant bequest of French paintings there.[8] The Ashmolean Museum also contains a room named in her honour.[6]
Florence died in 1936, leaving the residue of her estate to establish a Chair of Biometry at the University of London.[9]
References
[edit]- ^ a b Grier, David Alan (2013-11-01). When Computers Were Human. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-4936-9.
- ^ Radick, Gregory (2023-08-18). Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology. University of Chicago Press. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-226-82271-6.
- ^ Radick, Gregory (2023-08-18). Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-82271-6.
- ^ "Marriage of Miss Tebb". The Medium and Daybreak. 1883. p. 236.
- ^ Davis, Lea K. (2022-10-27). "Weldon, Bateson, and the origins of genetics: Reflections on the unraveling and rebuilding of a scientific community". PLOS Genetics. 18 (10): e1010379. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1010379. ISSN 1553-7390. PMC 9612466. PMID 36301806.
- ^ a b c "Oxford's female computing pioneers | Mathematical Institute". www.maths.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-09-01.
- ^ Flood, Raymond, ed. (2011-09-29). Mathematics in Victorian Britain. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-162794-1.
- ^ "University and Educational Intelligence". Nature. 121 (3042): 262. 1928-02-01. Bibcode:1928Natur.121..262.. doi:10.1038/121262a0. ISSN 1476-4687.
- ^ Pearson, Egon Sharpe. Karl Pearson. CUP Archive. p. 121.