Hilda Phoebe Hudson

Hilda Hudson was born in Cambridge, England, where her father was a lecturer in mathematics at St. John's College. The following year he was appointed a professor of mathematics at both King's College London and Queen's College London. Hilda's mother also had mathematical training at Newnham College, Cambridge.

Hudson studied mathematics at Newnham College between 1900 and 1903. She was unofficially the 7th Wrangler in the 1903 mathematical tripos exams (7th highest-scoring student among those completing the third year of the mathematical tripos with first-class honors), but at this time only men were officially ranked and recognized. After spending a year at the University of Berlin, she was appointed as a lecturer in mathematics at Newnham College, then as an Associate Research Fellow five years later. In 1912 she was the only woman to present a communication to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Cambridge. She spent the academic year 1912-1913 at Bryn Mawr College where Charlotte Scott was head of the mathematics department. After returning to England, Hudson taught for four years at the West Ham Technical Institute where she worked on applied mathematics problems. During World War I she worked for the Air Ministry as part of the Civil Service. Following the end of the war in 1919, she worked for two years as a technical assistant at Parnell and Company in Bristol. Between 1921 and 1927 she worked on writing a book on Cremona Transformations in Plane and Space, dedicated to her brother, also a mathematician, who died in a mountaineering accident in 1904. This was her last major mathematical publication.

Some of Hilda Hudson's publications:

1. "On the 3-3 birational transformation in three dimensions," Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Ser. 2, Vol. 9 (1911), 51-66 [Abstract].
2. "On the 3-3 birational transformation in three dimensions (Second Paper)," Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Ser. 2, Vol. 10 (1912), 15-47 [Abstract].
3. "On cubic birational space-transformations," American Journal of Mathematics, Vol. 34, No. 2 (April 1912), 203-210 [Abstract].
4. "Curves of contact of any order on algebraic surfaces," Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Ser. 2, Vol. 11 (1913), 398-410 [Abstract].
5. "On the product of two quadro-quadric space transformations," American Journal of Mathematics, Vol. 35, No. 2 (April 1913), 183-188 [Abstract].
6. Ruler and Compasses, Longman's Modern Mathematical Series, 1916.
7. Cremona Transformations in Plane and Space, Cambridge University Press, 1927.

References

1. Temple, J.G. "Hilda Phoebe Hudson," Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1969), 357-359
2. Biography at the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive

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