Phyllis Nicolson (21 September 1917 – 6 October 1968) was a British mathematician and physicist best known for her work on the

Crank–Nicolson method In numerical analysis, the Crank–Nicolson method is a finite difference method used for numerically solving the heat equation and similar partial differential equations. It is a second-order method in time. It is implicit in time, can be writ ...

together with John Crank.

Early life and education

Nicolson was born Phyllis Lockett in

Macclesfield Macclesfield is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Bollin in the east of the county, on the edge of the Cheshire Plain, with Macclesfield Forest to its eas ...

and went to

Stockport High School for Girls Stockport is a town and borough in Greater Manchester, England, south-east of Manchester, south-west of Ashton-under-Lyne and north of Macclesfield. The River Goyt and Tame merge to create the River Mersey here. Most of the town is within ...

. She graduated from

Manchester University , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

with a B.Sc. in 1938, M.Sc. in 1939 and a Ph.D. on ''Three Problems in Theoretical Physics'' in 1946. Her Ph.D. thesis began with

cosmic ray Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own ...

research conducted under

Lajos Jánossy Lajos Jánossy (2 March 1912, Budapest – 2 March 1978, Budapest) was a Hungarian physicist, astrophysicist and mathematician and a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His primary research fields were astrophysics, nuclear physics, q ...

during 1939 and 1940.

Hartree Differential Analyser work

Nicolson's Ph.D. was expected to be submitted in 1941 but was interrupted by wartime work with Douglas Hartree's research group at

from 1940 to 1945. During this time, Nicholson became a proficient numerical analyst and an expert user of Hartree's

differential analyser The differential analyser is a mechanical analogue computer designed to solve differential equations by integration, using wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration. It was one of the first advanced computing devices to be used operat ...

. Nicolson, along with other members of the research group worked on defence-related problems for the

Air Defence Research and Development Establishment The Air Defence Research and Development Establishment (ADRDE) was a civilian research organization run by the War Office that primarily studied the development of radar for British Army use. It was formed in 1941 from the merger of the Air Defen ...

(later the

Radar Research and Development Establishment The Radar Research and Development Establishment, RRDE for short, was a civilian research organization run by the United Kingdom's Ministry of Supply that primarily studied the development of radar for British Army use. The group traces its hist ...

), both part of the

Ministry of Supply The Ministry of Supply (MoS) was a department of the UK government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. A separate ministry, however, was responsible for airc ...

. Nicolson's two significant bodies of wartime research, "Transient behaviour in the single anode magnetron" and "heat conduction", formed the basis of parts II and III of her 1946 PhD thesis ''Three Problems in Theoretical Physics''. Nicolson's research on heat conduction related to solutions of the heat equation, and with her colleague John Crank she investigated the numerical stability of several solution techniques. The algorithm now known as the

emerged from this work and was published in 1947.

Postwar life and work

Nicolson was a research student in Cambridge from 1945 and completed her Ph.D. thesis completed at the Victoria University of Manchester (now

) in 1946. She was a Tucker-Price Research Fellow of

Girton College, Cambridge Girton College is one of the 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. The college was established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon as the first women's college in Cambridge. In 1948, it was granted full college statu ...

from 1946 to 1949, working at the

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...

. Nicolson moved to Leeds around January 1950 with her husband Malcolm Nicolson, also a physicist, as he had been appointed to a lectureship in Physics at Leeds University. Phyllis Nicholson had married Malcolm in 1942 and they had two sons, Donald Macleod Nicolson (born 20 September 1947 in Cambridge) and Roderick Ian Nicolson (born 5 February 1950 in Leeds). Malcolm Nicolson, aged 33, died in a train accident in December 1951, and Phyllis was appointed to take over his lectureship. In 1955, Nicolson married physicist Malcolm McCaig, who had a son Ian McCaig (born February 1946) from a previous marriage. In May 1957, Nicolson and McCaig had a son together, Andrew Malcolm McCaig. All three of Nicolson's sons ended up getting PhDs – in mathematics, psychology, and geology. Nicolson died from breast cancer in 1968 in

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire ...

Publications

* D. R. Hartree, P. Nicolson, N. Eyres. J. Howlett, and T. Pearcey. “Evaluation of the Solution of the Wave Equation for a Stratified Medium”, Air Defense Research & Development Establishment, Memorandum 47, May 1944. * D. R. Hartree, P. Nicolson, N. Eyres. J. Howlett, and T. Pearcey. “Evaluation of the Solution of the Wave Equation for a Stratified Medium:Normalisation”, Radar Research and Development Establishment, RRDE Report No. 279, March 1945. * ''Three Problems in Theoretical Physics''. PhD Thesis, University of Manchester, 1946. * The Sun's Magnetic Field and the Diurnal and Seasonal Variations in Cosmic Ray Intensity Janossy, L.; Lockett, P., ''Proc. of the Royal Society of London''. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, 1941, Vol. 178(972), pp. 52–60. * Meson Formation and the Geomagnetic Effects. Janossy, L.; Nicolson, P., ''Proc. of the Royal Society of London''. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, 1947, Vol. 192(1028), pp. 99–114. * A practical method for numerical evaluation of solutions of partial differential equations of the heat-conduction type, Crank, J.; Nicolson, P., ''Mathematical Proc. of the Cambridge Phil. Society'', 1947, Vol. 43(1), pp. 50–67. * A Theoretical Study of the Influence of Diffusion and Chemical Reaction Velocity on the Rate of Exchange of Carbon Monoxide and Oxygen between the Red Blood Corpuscle and the Surrounding Fluid, P. Nicolson and F. J. W. Roughton. ''Proc. of the Royal Society of London''. Series B, Biological Sciences, Vol. 138, No. 891, 1951, pp. 241–264.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nicolson, Phyllis 1917 births 1968 deaths 20th-century British mathematicians British women mathematicians People educated at Stockport High School for Girls Alumni of the University of Manchester Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge 20th-century women mathematicians Deaths from breast cancer Numerical analysts