Sheila Scott Macintyre

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...

(23 April 1910 – 21 March 1960) was a Scottish mathematician best known for her work on the Whittaker constant. Macintyre is also known for co-authoring a German–English mathematics dictionary with Edith Witte.

Education

Sheila Scott was born in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

, Scotland, on 23 April 1910, the daughter of Helen Myers Meldrum and James Alexander Scott. The family lived at 24 Dudley Avenue close to Trinity Academy, where her father was a teacher. She attended

Trinity Academy, Edinburgh Trinity Academy is a state-run secondary school in the north of Edinburgh, Scotland. It is located on the border between Trinity and Leith, next to Victoria Park, and a short distance from the banks of the Firth of Forth at Newhaven. Admissions ...

, during which time her father was appointed rector of the academy. Between 1926 and 1928 she attended Edinburgh Ladies' College (now

The Mary Erskine School The Mary Erskine School (MES) is an all-girls Private schools in the United Kingdom, private day school in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded in 1694 and has a roll of around 750 pupils. The majority of its pupils live in the surrounding area ...

), where she graduated as

dux ''Dux'' (, : ''ducēs'') is Latin for "leader" (from the noun ''dux, ducis'', "leader, general") and later for duke and its variant forms (doge, duce, etc.). During the Roman Republic and for the first centuries of the Roman Empire, ''dux'' coul ...

in mathematics and joint dux of the college. She studied at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

, graduating in 1932 with an MA in

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 ...

and

natural philosophy Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe, while ignoring any supernatural influence. It was dominant before the develop ...

. Afterwards, she continued her studies at

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

, taking the

Mathematical Tripos The Mathematical Tripos is the mathematics course that is taught in the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Origin In its classical nineteenth-century form, the tripos was a di ...

. In her final year at the university she worked on a research project under the supervision of

Mary Cartwright Dame Mary Lucy Cartwright (17 December 1900 – 3 April 1998) was a British mathematician. She was one of the pioneers of what would later become known as chaos theory. Along with J. E. Littlewood, Cartwright saw many solutions to a prob ...

. This resulted in her first published work ''On the Asymptotic Periods of Integral Functions''.

Career

Between 1934 and 1940 Scott taught mathematics at a number of schools. During this period Edmund Whittaker introduced Scott to fellow mathematician

Archibald James Macintyre Prof Archibald James Macintyre HFRSE (3 July 1908 – 4 August 1967) was a British-born mathematician. Life He was born in Sheffield on 3 July 1908, the second child of William Ewart Archibald Macintyre (b.1878) previously of Long Eaton, and his ...

. The two married in 1940, and shortly after she was appointed as an assistant lecturer at the

University of Aberdeen The University of Aberdeen (abbreviated ''Aberd.'' in List of post-nominal letters (United Kingdom), post-nominals; ) is a public university, public research university in Aberdeen, Scotland. It was founded in 1495 when William Elphinstone, Bis ...

, where her husband was a lecturer. During this time she began working on her doctoral thesis. While pregnant with her second child, she stopped teaching but continued research. She received her

PhD 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 ...

from Aberdeen in 1947 with the thesis ''Some Problems in Interpolatory Function Theory'' and under the supervision of Edward Maitland Wright.Sheila Scott Macintyre
School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St. Andrews, Retrieved 3 October 2014 Between 1947 and 1958 she published another 10 papers during a period where the couple had three children: Alister William Macintyre (born 1944), Douglas (born 1946 – died 1948 of

enteritis Enteritis is inflammation of the small intestine. It is most commonly caused by food or drink contaminated with pathogenic microbes,Dugdale, David C., IIII, and George F Longretc"Enteritis" MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia, 18 October 2008. Acces ...

) and Susan Elizabeth Macintyre Cantey (born 1950). Of her research during this time, Wright wrote "... good as her research was there would have been more of it had she not had a family to look after." In 1956 she and Edith Witte published the book ''German-English Mathematical Vocabulary''. In 1958, the family emigrated to

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio Ri ...

, United States, where Macintyre accepted a visiting professorship at the

University of Cincinnati The University of Cincinnati (UC or Cincinnati, informally Cincy) is a public university, public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. It was founded in 1819 and had an enrollment of over 53,000 students in 2024, making it the ...

. Also in 1958, she was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...

. Sheila Scott Macintyre died in 1960 in Cincinnati from

breast cancer Breast cancer is a cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a Breast lump, lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, Milk-rejection sign, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipp ...

. Mary Cartwright writes in her obituary "She is remembered as an exceptionally clear lecturer, and an excellent teacher with a warm-hearted but realistic interest in each of her students and also as a charming and helpful and often amusing colleague."

References

External links

*
"Sheila Scott Macintyre", Biographies of Women Mathematicians

Agnes Scott College Agnes Scott College is a Private university, private Women's Colleges in the Southern United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Decatur, Georgia. The college enrolls approximately 1,000 undergra ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Macintyre, Sheila Scott 1910 births 1960 deaths 20th-century Scottish mathematicians Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge Scottish emigrants to the United States University of Cincinnati faculty Alumni of the University of Edinburgh People educated at the Mary Erskine School Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Academics of the University of Aberdeen 20th-century Scottish women scientists Deaths from breast cancer in Ohio Scientists from Edinburgh 20th-century British women mathematicians 20th-century British mathematicians Scottish women academics