Eleanor Pairman

Eleanor "Nora" Pairman, also known as Nora Brown, (8 June 1896 – 14 September 1973) was a Scottish mathematician and only the third woman to receive a doctorate in math from Radcliffe College in Massachusetts. Later in life she developed novel methods to teach mathematics to blind students. she started studying mathematics at the University of Edinburgh.

Career Eleanor Pairman graduated with an MA in 1917 with first class honors in mathematics and natural philosophy, after which she was awarded a three-year Vans Dunlop scholarship which permitted her to continue her studies at any university. Pairman's role in the Galton Laboratory was that of a human computer. She was referenced as one of a number of women contributors in the 1917 Galton Laboratory publication A study of the long bones of the English skeleton Part I, co-authored by Julia Bell and Karl Pearson and which sought to identify "racial differences in man".

In 1919, Pairman co-authored with Karl Pearson the paper "On Corrections for the Moment-Coefficients of Limited Range Frequency Distributions When there are Finite or Infinite Ordinates and Any Slopes at the Terminals of the Range" published in the journal Biometrika.

One of her instructors, Cargill G. Knott, wrote a letter of recommendation saying: "With fitting opportunity she has every promise of a distinguished and useful career." Pairman arrived in New York on 12 October 1919 and went on to Cambridge, Massachusetts to study at Radcliffe College, an all-women's college closely associated with the all-male Harvard College. When she received her doctorate she was only the third woman to be awarded a PhD in mathematics from Radcliffe College. In that same year she married a fellow grad student, Bancroft Brown.

Much later, Pairman taught math part-time at Dartmouth, from September 1955 until June 1959.

Teaching math in Braille About 1950, Pairman started focusing on teaching mathematics to blind students, learning Braille and learning how to make diagrams using her sewing machine and other household items. Together, they had four children, John Pairman (b. 1923), Barbara (1925-1979), Joanna (1935-1935), and Margaret Wylde (b. 1937). Two of her three surviving children (Joanna died as a baby) went on to earn doctorates of their own.

Pairman died after a long battle with breast cancer on 14 September 1973, at the age of 77, in White River Junction, Vermont. She was survived by her husband, two sisters, three children, seven grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter. Her husband died the following year.

Selected publications Pairman authored or co-authored several peer-reviewed papers during her career, including: