Margaret Swainson Anderson

Margaret Swainson Anderson (14 June 1902 – 15 September 1952) (née Willis) was a British educator, geographer and cartographer who taught at Girton College, part of the University of Cambridge, and became one of the first women appointed to an academic post at Cambridge in 1928.

Biography Margaret Willis was born 14 June 1902, in Barnsley, Yorkshire, England, the second of three daughters of botanist John Christopher Willis and Minnie Baldwin, who held a B.Sc. from University of London. Margaret went to the private girls school, Blackheath High School, located in southeast London, England. She then attended the Perse High School for Girls in Cambridge. She was enrolled as a student at Girton College from 1921 through 1925, graduating with a BA in 1924. Then she taught at Malvern Girls' College for a year before being appointed an Assistant Lecturer in Geography at the University of Manchester in 1926.

Women were not eligible for an appointment to Cambridge colleges until 1926. At Girton College, Anderson was first woman named to an academic post when she took the position of Demonstratorship in the Geography Department in 1928.

World geographer With the start of World War II, the couple returned to Cambridge, where Margaret worked as a Plotter, Eastern Regional HQ, Civil Defence, 1939–1940.

Selected works Anderson, Margaret Swainson. Geography of living things. Internet Archive. London, English Universities Press . Anderson, Margaret S. "Splendour of Earth: An Anthology of Travel." The Geographical Journal 121, no. 2 (1955): 232. Margaret Swainson Anderson, Transactions and Papers of the Institute of British Geographers 18 (1952)