Ida Busbridge

Ida Winifred Busbridge (1908–1988) was a British mathematician who taught at the University of Oxford from 1935 until 1970. She was the first woman to be appointed to an Oxford fellowship in mathematics.

Early life and education Ida Busbridge was born to Percival George Busbridge and May Edith Webb on 10 February 1908. She was the youngest of four children. Her father died when she was 8 months old of complications from influenza. This left her mother, a primary school teacher, to care for the children.

Busbridge started her schooling at 6 in a school in her mother's district. She moved schools to Christ's Hospital in 1918, having won a scholarship at the age of ten. Here she received a firm grounding in mathematics from Miss Mitchener. Busbridge became head girl of the school and was later described as the most brilliant pupil in its 400-year history.

In 1926 she enrolled in Royal Holloway College, London, intending to specialise in physics, but switched to mathematics in 1928. She turned down a place at Newnham College Cambridge as the scholarship to Royal Holloway was significantly more generous.

Career She began teaching as a demonstrator in mathematics at University College, London in 1933. She was appointed to a Fellowship of St Hugh's College, Oxford, in 1946 – the first women to be appointed to a college fellowship in mathematics.

Busbridge's work included integral equations and radiative transfer. She was highly regarded as a lecturer and tutor, attending to her students' educational and personal needs. She retired from Oxford in 1970, and became one of the early tutors and developers of courses at the Open University, teaching Lebesgue integration and tutoring complex analysis.