◀ ▲ ▶History / 20th-century / Person: Sargent, Winifred Lydia Caunden
Person: Sargent, Winifred Lydia Caunden
Winifred Lydia Caunden Sargent was an English mathematician who worked in Lebesgue integration, and fractional integration and differentiation.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- In September 1915 Sargent entered Ackworth School which had been founded by the Quakers in 1779 in the abandoned buildings of a Foundling Hospital in Ackworth near Pontefract and still occupied these building when Sargent became a boarder there.
- Sargent left The Mount School in York and became a day pupil at The Herbert Strutt School in Derby Road, Belper, Derbyshire.
- In 1923, while studying at The Herbert Strutt School, Sargent gained a Derby County Scholarship, a State Scholarship, and a Mary Ewart Scholarship to study mathematics at Newnham College, Cambridge.
- After graduating Sargent began to undertake research in analysis but after working for a while she felt that she was not producing results of the exceptionally high standard which she had set herself.
- Fortunately, even if Sargent did not believe strongly enough in her own mathematical abilities, others knew better.
- Although Sargent was somewhat unsure about the move, she was persuaded to make it and she began teaching at Westfield College in 1931.
- Sargent's first appointment in Royal Holloway College was as an Assistant Lecturer in Mathematics, for although by the time of her appointment she had published a further two papers, she had never completed a doctorate.
- In 1939 Sargent registered as a doctoral student of Bosanquet who was at that time a Reader in the University of London having interests in analysis which were close to those of Sargent.
- In 1947 Bosanquet inaugurated a weekly seminar and Sargent attended this from its beginnings until she retired, without missing a single week in 20 years.
- In 1954 Sargent was awarded a Sc.D. by the University of Cambridge, and promoted to Reader at Bedford College.
- Two years later, in 1967, Sargent retired from her Readership and, unlike many mathematicians, seems to have given up research at this time.
- Sargent's mathematical work involved the study of different types of integral.
- Sargent concentrated on integrals such as the Perron integral, the Denjoy integral, the Cesàro-Perron integral, and the Cesàro-Denjoy integral.
- For example in 1941 Sargent published A descriptive definition of Cesàro-Perron integrals in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society which gives an inductive definition, using Cesàro derivatives, of the Cesàro-Denjoy integral which is equivalent to Burkill's integral.
- This is only a few examples of the work which Sargent carried out and published in 24 papers but it gives an indication of the type of problems which interested her.
Born 8 May 1905, Ambergate, Derbyshire, England. Died 11 October 1979, Hampstead Garden, London, 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! 
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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
