Dame Kathleen Mary Ollerenshaw, (''née'' Timpson; 1 October 1912 – 10 August 2014) was a British mathematician and politician who was

Lord Mayor of Manchester This is a list of the lord mayors of the City of Manchester in the North West of England. Not to be confused with the Directly elected Greater Manchester mayor. The current and 126th lord mayor is Paul Andrews, Labour, who has served Since ...

from 1975 to 1976 and an advisor on educational matters to

Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of th ...

's government in the 1980s.

Early life and education

She was born Kathleen Mary Timpson in

Withington Withington is a suburb of Manchester, England. Historically part of Lancashire, it lies from Manchester city centre, south of Fallowfield, north-east of Didsbury and east of Chorlton-cum-Hardy. Withington had a population at the 2011 ce ...

, Manchester, where she attended Lady Barn House School (1918–26). She was a grandchild of the founder of the Timpson shoe repair business, who had moved to Manchester from

Kettering Kettering is a market town, market and industrial town, industrial town in the North Northamptonshire district of Northamptonshire, England, west of Cambridge, England, Cambridge, southwest of Peterborough, southeast of Leicester and north- ...

and established the business there by 1870. She became fascinated with mathematics, inspired by the Lady Barn headmistress, Miss Jenkin Jones. While at Lady Barn, she met her future husband, Robert Ollerenshaw. Ollerenshaw became completely

deaf Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written ...

at age eight and was taught to lip read. She gravitated toward the study of

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

as it is not dependent on hearing. She was further inspired by a headmistress at Lady Barn House School who studied mathematics at

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

. As a young woman, she attended

St Leonards School St Leonards School is a co-educational private boarding and day school for pupils aged 4–19 in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. Founded in 1877 as St Andrews School for Girls Company, it adopted the St Leonards name upon moving to its current pre ...

and Sixth Form College in St Andrews, Scotland where today the house of young male boarders is named after her. At the age of 19 she gained admittance to

Somerville College, Oxford Somerville College is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. It began admitting men in 1994. The colle ...

, to study mathematics. She completed her doctorate at Somerville in 1945 on "Critical Lattices" under the supervision of Theo Chaundy. She wrote five original research papers which were sufficient for her to earn her

DPhil A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

degree without the need of a formal written thesis. While an undergraduate, she became engaged to Robert Ollerenshaw, who became a distinguished military

surgeon In medicine, a surgeon is a medical doctor who performs surgery. Even though there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon is a licensed physician and received the same medical training as physicians before spec ...

(

Colonel Colonel ( ; abbreviated as Col., Col, or COL) is a senior military Officer (armed forces), officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, a colon ...

R.G.W. Ollerenshaw, ERD, TD, BM, DMRD) and a pioneer of

medical illustration Medical illustration is the practice of creating illustrations or animations to visually represent medical or biological subjects that may be difficult to explain only using words. History Medical illustrations have been made possibly since the ...

. They married in September 1939 and had two children, Charles (1941–99) and Florence (1946–72). In 1942 she suffered a

miscarriage Miscarriage, also known in medical terms as a spontaneous abortion, is an end to pregnancy resulting in the loss and expulsion of an embryo or fetus from the womb before it can fetal viability, survive independently. Miscarriage before 6 weeks ...

and "cried nonstop for three days" as a result of stress when her husband was posted abroad for front-line

war War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...

service.

Career

After the Second World War, the Ollerenshaws moved to Manchester, where Kathleen worked as a part-time lecturer in the mathematics department at Manchester University while raising her children and continued her work on lattices. In 1949, at the age of 37, she received her first effective hearing aid. Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw MAS 2007

Outside of academia, Ollerenshaw served as a

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

Councillor A councillor, alternatively councilman, councilwoman, councilperson, or council member, is someone who sits on, votes in, or is a member of, a council. This is typically an elected representative of an electoral district in a municipal or re ...

for

Rusholme Rusholme () is an area of Manchester, in Greater Manchester, England, two miles south of the Manchester city centre, city centre. The population of the ward at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census was 13,643. Rusholme is bounded by Chorl ...

for twenty-five years (1954–79), a member of the city council's finance committee (1968–71), a chairman of the education committee of the Association of Municipal Corporations (1967–71), Lord Mayor of Manchester (1975–76), High Sheriff of Greater Manchester from 1978 to 1979, and the prime motivator in the creation of the Royal Northern College of Music. She was made a Freeman of the City of Manchester and was an advisor on educational matters to

's government in the 1980s. She was President of the

Institute of Mathematics and its Applications The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) is the UK's chartered professional body for mathematicians and one of the UK's learned societies for mathematics (another being the London Mathematical Society). The IMA aims to advance ...

from 1978 to 1979. She published at least 26 mathematical papers, her best-known contribution being to most-perfect pandiagonal magic squares. Upon her death, she left a legacy in trust to support distinguished research visitors and public engagement activities at the

School of Mathematics, University of Manchester The Department of Mathematics at the University of Manchester is one of the largest unified mathematics departments in the United Kingdom, with over 90 academic staff and an undergraduate intake of roughly 400 students per year (including student ...

. An annual public lecture at the university is named in her honour. An amateur astronomer, Ollerenshaw donated her telescope to

Lancaster University Lancaster University (officially The University of Lancaster) is a collegiate public university, public research university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established in 1964 by royal charter, as one of several new univer ...

, and an

observatory An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysics, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed. Th ...

there bears her name. She was an honorary member of the Manchester Astronomical Society and held the post of vice-president for a number of years. Ollerenshaw attended

St Andrews St Andrews (; ; , pronounced ʰʲɪʎˈrˠiː.ɪɲ is a town on the east coast of Fife in Scotland, southeast of Dundee and northeast of Edinburgh. St Andrews had a recorded population of 16,800 , making it Fife's fourth-largest settleme ...

, Fife, and served as the school's president from 1981 to 2003. She was succeeded by Baroness Byford,

spokeswoman in the

House of Lords The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the lower house, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. One of the oldest ext ...

. She turned 100 in October 2012. She died in

Didsbury Didsbury is a suburb of Manchester, England, on the north bank of the River Mersey, south of Manchester city centre. The population at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census was 26,788. Within the boundaries of the Historic counties of ...

on 10 August 2014, at the age of 101. Her husband and both their children had predeceased her.

Honours and legacy

* In 1970, Ollerenshaw was appointed

Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

for services to education. * Composer Sir

Peter Maxwell Davies Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (8 September 1934 – 14 March 2016) was an English composer and conductor, who in 2004 was made Master of the Queen's Music. As a student at both the University of Manchester and the Royal Manchester College of Music ...

dedicated his Naxos Quartet No.9 to her.

References

Bibliography

*Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw, ''To Talk of Many Things: an autobiography'', Manchester Univ Press, 2004, *Kathleen Ollerenshaw, David S. Brée: ''Most-perfect Pandiagonal Magic Squares: their construction and enumeration'', Southend-on-Sea: Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, 1998, 186 pages, *Kathleen Ollerenshaw, Herman Bondi, ''Magic Squares of Order Four'', Scholium Intl, 1983, *Kathleen Ollerenshaw, ''First Citizen'', Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1977, *K. M. Ollerenshaw; D. S. Brée, "Most-perfect pandiagonal magic squares", in: ''Mathematics Today'', 1998, vol. 34, pp. 139–143. . *D. S. Brée and K. M. Ollerenshaw, "Pandiagonal magic-squares from mixed auxiliary squares", in: ''Mathematics Today'', 1998, vol. 34, pp. 105–118. . *Kathleen Ollerenshaw. 194
The Critical Lattices of a Square Frame
''Journal of the London Mathematical Society'' 19:75 part 3, pp. 178–184
The Critical Lattices of a Square Frame

External links

* * *
Interview on BBC Radio 4
*
The Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Observatory at Lancaster UniversityThe Manchester Astronomical Society
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ollerenshaw, Kathleen 1912 births 2014 deaths Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire People educated at St Leonards School Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford Conservative Party (UK) councillors People from Withington Amateur astronomers 20th-century English astronomers 20th-century English mathematicians 21st-century British mathematicians 20th-century British women mathematicians 21st-century British women mathematicians British mathematics educators Recreational mathematicians British women astronomers Deaf politicians British politicians with disabilities Women mayors of places in England Lord mayors of Manchester High sheriffs of Greater Manchester British women centenarians 20th-century English women scientists English deaf people Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society Women councillors in England British scientists with disabilities Deaf scholars and academics