Bertha Swirles

Bertha Swirles, Lady Jeffreys (22 May 1903 – 18 December 1999) was a British physicist who carried out research on quantum theory, particularly in its early days. She was associated with Girton College, University of Cambridge, as student and Fellow, for over 70 years.^[1]

Bertha Swirles was born in Northampton in 1903, attended Northampton School for Girls and then went up to Girton College, in 1921, to read Mathematics, graduating with first class Honours. She became a research student of Ralph Fowler, one of a distinguished company of his students that included Paul Dirac and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. She was awarded her PhD in 1929, by which time she was an Assistant Lecturer in Manchester. She followed with similar posts in Bristol and then at Imperial College (then the Royal College of Science), London in the 1930s.^[2][3] She married Harold Jeffreys in 1940, and became Lady Jeffreys upon his knighthood in 1953.

Some early scientific publications

• Bertha Swirles, The internal conversion of -rays, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, Vol. 116, No. 774, pp. 491-500 (1927). This paper dates from the time when Bertha Swirles was Yarrow Research Student at Girton College.
• Bertha Swirles, The internal conversion of Gamma-rays. — Part II, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, Vol. 121, No. 787, pp. 447-456 (1928). This paper dates from the time when Bertha Swirles was Hertha Ayrton Research Fellow at Girton College.
• Bertha Swirles, The coefficients of absorption and opacity of a partially degenerate gas, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, Vol. 141, No. 845, pp. 554-566 (1933).
• Bertha Swirles, The relativistic self-consistent field, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, Vol. 152, No. 877, pp. 625-649 (1935).
• Bertha Swirles, The relativistic interaction of two electrons in the self-consistent field method, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, Vol. 157, No. 892, pp. 680-696 (1936).
• D. R. Hartree, W. Hartree, and Bertha Swirles, Self-consistent field, including exchange and superposition of configurations, with some results for Oxygen, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series A, Vol. 238, No. 790, pp. 229-247 (1939).

Book

• Sir Harold Jeffreys and Bertha Swirles (Lady Jeffreys), Methods of Mathematical Physics, third revised edition (Cambridge University Press, 1956 — reprinted 1999). This book, first published in 1946, is commonly referred to as Jeffreys & Jeffreys. ISBN 0-521-66402-0, ISBN 978-0-521-66402-8.

Some biographical sketches by Bertha Swirles

• Bertha Swirles, John Arthur Gaunt (1904-1944), Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 73-79 (1990).
• Bertha Swirles, Reminiscences and Discoveries: Harold Jeffreys from 1891 to 1940, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 46, No. 2, pp. 301-308 (1992).

Obituaries

• R. M. Williams, Obituary: Bertha Jeffreys, The Independent (London), Wednesday, 22 December 1999.
• Mary Walmsley, Lady Jeffreys 1903-1999, The Mathematical Gazette, Vol. 84, No. 500, pp. 321-323 (2000).
• J. A. Hudson, Lady Bertha Swirles, 1903-1999, Astronomy & Geophysics, Vol. 41, No. 3. 36-37 (2000).

References

External links

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Bertha Swirles Jeffreys", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews .
• CWP at UCLA: Bertha Swirles, Lady Jeffreys
• Portrait by Julia Hedgecoe, 19 March 1998, National Portrait Gallery, London.