Winifred Margaret Deans (9 October 1901 – 7 June 1990) was a prolific translator of German scientific texts into English, who also taught mathematics and physics to secondary schoolchildren and worked at the Commonwealth Bureau of Animal Nutrition.

Life and education

Deans was one of two siblings, born to Duncan Deans and Mary Ann Sharp, in

New Milton New Milton is a market town and civil parish in the New Forest District, New Forest district, in southwest Hampshire, England. To the north is in the New Forest and to the south the coast at Barton-on-Sea. The town is equidistant between Lymi ...

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. She graduated with an M.A. with First Class Honours in Mathematics from 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 ...

in 1922. She also obtained a B.Sc. from the same university in 1923. She later studied at

Newnham College, Cambridge Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millicen ...

, obtaining a First Class B.A. after she took Part I of 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 1925. She earned another M.A. from Cambridge in 1929. Deans won several awards in the course of her education, the University of Aberdeen awarding her the Simpson mathematical prize and the

Neil Arnott Neil Arnott (15 May 1788 – March 1874) was a Scottish physician and inventor. He was the inventor of one of the first forms of the waterbed, the Arnott waterbed, and was awarded the Rumford Medal in 1852 for the construction of the smoke ...

prize for experimental physics in 1921; she also stood first in the examination for the Greig prize in natural philosophy.

Work

Deans taught mathematics and physics at the Harrow County Secondary School for Girls for two years. She then returned to Aberdeen and received a Diploma in Education in 1927. She joined

Blackie and Son Blackie & Son was a publishing house in Glasgow, Scotland, and London, England, from 1809 to 1991.Iain Stevenson, ''Book Makers: British Publishing in the Twentieth Century''. London: The British Library, 2010, p. 77. History The firm was foun ...

, a publishing house in

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

as an Assistant Science Editor. She began translating German publications, primarily related to Physics and Mathematics, for them. Important translations included those of texts by

Max Born Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German-British theoretical physicist who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics, and supervised the work of a ...

Léon Brillouin Léon Nicolas Brillouin (; August 7, 1889 – October 4, 1969) was a French physicist. He made contributions to quantum mechanics, radio wave propagation in the atmosphere, solid-state physics, and information theory. Early life Brilloui ...

Louis de Broglie Louis Victor Pierre Raymond, 7th Duc de Broglie (15 August 1892 – 19 March 1987) was a French theoretical physicist and aristocrat known for his contributions to quantum theory. In his 1924 PhD thesis, he postulated the wave nature of elec ...

Peter Debye Peter Joseph William Debye ( ; born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije, ; March 24, 1884 – November 2, 1966) was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Biography Early life Born in Maastricht, Neth ...

Richard Gans __NOTOC__ Richard Martin Gans (7 March 1880 – 27 June 1954), German of Jewish origin, born in Hamburg, was the physicist who founded the Physics Institute of the National University of La Plata, Argentina. He was its Director in two different ...

Robert Pohl Robert Wichard Pohl (10 August 1884 – 5 June 1976) was a German physicist and professor of the University of Göttingen. The physical institute in Göttingen led by Pohl was one of the first schools in solid state physics and Nevill Francis Mot ...

and

Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger ( ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was an Austrian-Irish theoretical physicist who developed fundamental results in quantum field theory, quantum theory. In particul ...

. She also translated Else Wegener and Fritz Loewe's chronicle of

Alfred Wegener Alfred Lothar Wegener (; ; 1 November 1880 – November 1930) was a German climatologist, geologist, geophysicist, meteorologist, and polar researcher. During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and ...

’s fourth expedition to Greenland, undertaken in 1930–31. Deans joined the Commonwealth Bureau of Animal Nutrition which was part of the

Rowett Research Institute The Rowett Institute is a research centre for studies into food and nutrition, located in Aberdeen, Scotland. History The institute was founded in 1913 when the University of Aberdeen and the North of Scotland College of Agriculture agreed ...

, Aberdeen, in 1945. She retired from the bureau in 1966. Her library and personal papers were given to the University of Aberdeen, and can now be found in their Special Collections, Library and Archives.

Translations

* With J F Shearer: ''Collected Papers on Wave Mechanics'', E Schrödinger, translated in 1928 * ''Selected Papers on Wave Mechanics'', L de Broglie and L Brillouin, translated in 1928 * ''Alpine Flowers: The Most Common Alpine Plants of Switzerland, Austria and Bavaria'', G Hegi, translated in 1930 * ''The Dipole Moment and Chemical Structure'', P Debye, translated in 1931 * ''The Interference of Electrons'', P Debye, translated in 1931 * ''Vector Analysis and Applications to Physics'', R Gans, translated in 1932 * ''Physical Principles of Mechanics and Acoustics'', R Pohl, translated in 1932 * ''The Structure of Molecules'', P Debye, translated in 1932 * ''The Restless Universe'', M Born, translated in 1935 * ''The Cave Children'', A T Sonnleitner, translated in 1935 * With J Dougall: ''The Physics of Solids and Fluids'', P P Ewald, T Poschl and L Prandtl, translated in 1936 * ''Greenland Journey'', E Wegener and F Loewe, translated in 1939 * ''Hinterland Liberia'', E Becker-Donner, translated in 1939

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Deans, Winifred M. 1901 births 1990 deaths 20th-century British women mathematicians English women physicists English translators 20th-century British women scientists 20th-century British translators 20th-century British physicists People from New Milton Scientists from Hampshire Alumni of the University of Aberdeen Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge 20th-century English women 20th-century English translators