Ida Busbridge

Ida Winifred Busbridge (1908–1988) was a British mathematician who taught at the University of Oxford from 1935 until 1970. She was the first woman to be appointed to an Oxford fellowship in mathematics.

Ida Busbridge born to Percival George Busbridge and May Edith Webb on 10 February 1908. She was the youngest of four children. Her father died when she was 8 months old of complications from influenza. This left her mother, an elementary school teacher, to care for the children. Busbridge started her schooling at 6 in a school in her mother's district. She moved schools to Christ's Hospital in 1918. In 1926 she enrolled in Royal Holloway College, London, intending to specialize in physics, but switched to mathematics in 1928. During her schooling she was involved in the Choral Society and University Choir along with the Science Discussion Society. Busbridge graduated in 1929 with first class honors and was the awarded the Sir John Lubbock Prize for best first class honors of all London University Colleges. She continued her education at Royal Holloway, earning a Masters with distinction in mathematics in 1933.

She began teaching as a Demonstrator in mathematics at University College, London in 1933. She moved to St Hugh's College Oxford in 1935 to teach mathematics alongside Dorthy Wrinch to undergraduates of five women's colleges. Influenced by Madge Adam and Harry Plaskett, she shifted her interest to applications of math in astronomy and physics. During the Second World War, she also helped with the education of physicists and engineers at Oxford; her workload was especially great--not only because other mathematicians at the university were called up for special war service--but also because women formed a higher percentage of the undergraduate population during the war years. She was appointed to a Fellowship of St Hugh's College, Oxford, in 1946 – she was the first women to be appointed to a college fellowship in mathematics. In 1962, she was awarded a Doctor of Science degree by Oxford.She was also a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Busbridge's work included integral equations and radiative transfer.She was highly regarded as a lecturer and tutor, attending to her students' educational and personal needs. She retired from Oxford in 1970, and died in 1988.

She was president of the Mathematical Association for 1964.