Person: Hardcastle, Frances
Frances Hardcastle was an English mathematician who held fellowships in the United States. She studied point groups and wrote some important works. She also was a major figure in the Women's Suffrage movement and was secretary of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Frances was baptised on 9 September 1866 in All Saints Church, Writtle.
- Joseph Alfred Hardcastle won the Gold Medal for Mathematics at Harrow, studied at Trinity College, Cambridge but had to give up because of ill health.
- John Herschel Hardcastle received his commission in the Royal Regiment of Artillery, studied at the Ordnance College, Woolwich under George Greenhill, and undertook research on Ballistic Tables.
- Alexander Hardcastle joined the army, served with the Royal Engineers in the Boer War, then retired to Sicily where he worked restoring a Doric temple.
- Henry Robert Hardcastle became a clergyman.
- At the time of the 1881 census, Frances and Alice Louisa Beatrice were boarding with Pauline Gerrard, a teacher of languages, and her assistant Elizabeth Thomas, a teacher of English, in Dudley Road, Tonbridge, Kent.
- Hardcastle entered Girton College, Cambridge in 1888 to study the mathematical tripos.
- Hardcastle then travelled to the United States, sailing on the ship Berlin from Liverpool to New York arriving 1 October 1892.
- While at Bryn Mawr, Hardcastle translated Felix Klein's work Über Riemanns Theorie der algebraischen Functionen und ihrer Integrale Ⓣ(On Riemann's theory of algebraic functions and their integrals) into English.
- Hardcastle returned to England sailing on the ship Gallia from New York to Liverpool, via Queenstown, Ireland, arriving on 13 July 1893.
- After the year in Chicago, Hardcastle again returned to England for the summer of 1894.
- On 13 April 1899, Francis Macaulay proposed Hardcastle as a referee of a paper submitted to the Cambridge Philosophical Society.
- This may not appear, at first sight, as a very significant thing to record, but it was significant in the Hardcastle became the first woman to referee a paper for the Society.
- The British Association asked Hardcastle to report on the present state of the theory of point groups.
- Now we have recorded several outstanding achievements which show what an outstanding role model Hardcastle was for advancing the cause of women mathematicians at the end of the 19th and early years of the 20th centuries.
- it is clear that Frances interest in suffrage and women's rights reach back to her days at Girton where she spoke to the society on women's suffrage talking about the aims and history of and its relation to the Women's Suffrage Movement and the Higher Education of Women and was a member of the CWSA (Cambridge Association for Women's Suffrage).
- Later, Frances became Honorary Secretary of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) under Millicent Fawcett and can be seen to sign a letter written in 1908 to 'The Times', stating her disagreement with militant methods taken by suffragettes.
- Although this quote gives an accurate picture of Hardcastle's involvement with the Women's Suffrage movement, there is some confusion over the timing of events.
- The address that Hardcastle gave to the Girton College Women's Suffrage Society mentioned in the quote was around the year 1909.
- About 270 British women signed a list supporting the aims of the Congress, one being Hardcastle.
- She lived in London for a period, and worked for a year as a joint secretary, with Frances Sterling, for the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (the suffragist organisation), before moving to Newcastle where she served as secretary of the North-Eastern Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies.
- She signed the Declaration in Favour of Women's Suffrage in 1889 and through her work with Women's Suffrage she met Hardcastle and the two became close friends.
- Hardcastle was joint secretary of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in 1907.
- Both Williams and Hardcastle sent out a letter in June 1907 announcing that an official newspaper 'Women's Franchise' was being launched for the National Union.
- Hardcastle moved to Newcastle, probably around 1909, to live with Williams and Hardcastle became the joint secretary of the North-Eastern Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies.
- Hardcastle and Williams travelled together to the International Congress of Women held in Zurich in May 1919; Hardcastle was secretary of the North-Eastern Federation at this time.
- Although living in Stocksfield, Hardcastle died at the Royal Hotel, Cambridge, while she was making a visit to the city.
Born 13 August 1866, Writtle, Essex, England. Died 26 December 1941, Cambridge, England.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin England, Women
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
