by A. E. L. Davis
© Oxford University Press 2004 All rights reserved
Hardcastle, Frances (1866-1941), mathematician, was born at Writtle, Essex, on 13 August 1866, the eldest of eight children of Henry Hardcastle (1840-1922), graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, a barrister, and director of a brewery. Her mother was Maria Sophia Herschel (1839-1929), seventh child (fourth daughter) of Sir John Frederick William Herschel, so Frances was a great-grandchild of Sir William Herschel, inheriting a notable astronomical tradition. Two of her brothers also graduated from Trinity College; the elder, Joseph Alfred (1868-1917), later became an astronomer.
Frances Hardcastle was educated privately before entering Girton College, Cambridge, in 1888; her aunt Constance Anne Herschel (1855-1939) had previously been resident lecturer in natural sciences and mathematics there. In 1891 Frances Hardcastle passed second class in the mathematical tripos part one examinations, and went on in 1892, somewhat unusually, to sit the tripos part two, in which she gained class 2 (3). Cambridge did not then permit women to graduate but Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, USA, accepted her as a graduate student, and she worked under Professor C. A. Scott, also a Girtonian. She was appointed an honorary fellow in mathematics at Chicago University for 1893/4 and held a fellowship in mathematics at Bryn Mawr during the academic year 1894/5. Her sole publication while in the United States was a translation from the German of Felix Klein's 1881 lectures on algebraic functions. However, it was probably during this time that she began her research into point groups--nowadays called 'divisors' and much studied in algebraic geometry.
Hardcastle returned to Britain in 1895 to become a graduate student at Girton. There her research matured and in papers in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society (1897-8) and the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (1898) she set out an extension of the theory of point groups which was said to display great insight. She further synthesized the topic by four articles on the theory of point groups in the Reports of the British Association for the years 1900 and 1902-4, which included a historical survey. She deviated only once from single-minded pursuit of this subject--appropriately, to assist Arthur Berry with the publication in 1898 of his Short History of Astronomy by verifying the calculations, proof-reading, and drawing many diagrams.
It seems that an accident, possibly in conjunction with ill health, caused Hardcastle to leave Cambridge in 1904 and abandon her mathematical research. She was able to live in adequate comfort on money settled on her by her father, increased later by inheritance. She and her sister Mira Francisca were named joint executors of her father's will, despite the availability of several brothers. 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 organization), before moving to Newcastle where she served as secretary of the North-Eastern Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies. She spent her eventual retirement beside the Northumberland moors at Stocksfield, in a house she had built with Dr Ethel Williams, a former Newcastle GP. She died on 26 December 1941 while visiting Cambridge, and was buried in Girton churchyard.
A. E. L. DAVIS
Sources
K. T. Butler and H. I. McMorran, eds., Girton College register, 1869-1946 (1948)
Girton Review, Easter term (1942), 19
Venn, Alum. Cant.
private information (2004)
Wealth at death
£4400: probate, 16 May 1942, CGPLA Eng. & Wales
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/64021]
GO TO THE OUP ARTICLE (Sign-in required)