... of complications arising from influenza. His death was attributed by his family to overwork and lack of proper medical care.

... most capable and thoroughly reliable.

Since G N Watson published his paper on "General transforms", alternative proofs of his theorems have been given by E C Titchmarsh and M Plancherel. These depend on approximations by means of series of functions possessing specific properties. In this note I show that the theorems can be proved by means of the properties of mean-square limits, without using series of approximating functions.

St Hugh's was lucky enough to adopt Ida at this juncture, to present her for Matriculation and to appoint her Lecturer in Mathematics. When Dr Wrinch left England for America in 1938 Ida inherited her responsibility for the teaching of women mathematicians and in 1945 was appointed Fellow and Tutor at St Hugh's.

In his new book on Fourier integrals [Introduction to the theory of Fourier integrals (1937)], Prof Titchmarsh gives the formal solution by Mellin transforms of some dual integral equations, which arise in connection with the problem of a flat electrified disc of conducting material. He suggested to me that I should consider conditions for the validity of his analysis and in this paper I give a solution. Prof Titchmarsh has very kindly helped me with many suggestions and criticisms and I should like here to express my gratitude to him.

Miss Busbridge (M.A. London), a member of our Society, awarded the D.Phil. in 1938 and the M.A. by decree in 1939, is now Lecturer in Mathematics, and will examine for and take pupils from the other Societies as required. Oxford knows her well, for since 1935 she has been a diligent assistant to Dr Wrinch when both were in residence, and an effective substitute when she was abroad.

The atmosphere grew less formal and constrained during the 1950s when older fellows retired and younger women took their places Dr Ida Busbridge (Royal Holloway College, London) became mathematics tutor in 1939 and, until the women's colleges were able to appoint their own tutors in the subject, for many years had sole charge of all women students reading mathematics. She was considered an outstanding lecturer and demanding tutor. Clare Richardson (St Hugh's 1954) recalled that Dr Busbridge kept assigning more and more work every week to her and her tutorial partner until they finally gaped at her in astonishment. "Miss Busbridge just smiled and told us that she had been trying to find out how much we could cope with, and now she knew."

At the start of Michaelmas Term 1959, Gay and I both arrived to read Mathematics at St Hugh's. Our tutor was the notable mathematician Ida Busbridge, always known as Buz, who decided we should be tutorial partners as we were both clergy daughters and should be companions! She was quite right about that as we became lifelong friends. Buz's tutorial style was to seat her students either side of her at a table while she wrote out the solution to a problem with laborious slowness. We spent many hours that first year following her meticulous workings (later to find her teaching much more valuable than I realised at the time).

Dorothy Wrinch had conformed to the usual Oxford tutorial style: undergraduates taught themselves from books, lectures and their contemporaries, and bothered a tutor about details only when it was absolutely necessary. Ida Busbridge, a graduate of Royal Holloway College in the University of London, believed that this system was inappropriate for women undergraduates who had not experienced the rigorous preparation for Oxford available in many boys' schools. She set weekly problems for students and required written solutions to be handed in before the next tutorial, so that she could read and comment upon them. In tutorials she taught basic material, normally to two students, and at the end handed over the meticulous notes she had written during the hour. Not all students found this routine agreeable or stimulating, but students became less likely to give up on mathematics, and examination results improved.
...
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Ida Busbridge was the spokeswoman for the teaching of women undergraduate mathematicians at Oxford, both in the University and in schools, and completely changed how things were done. She maintained good relations with schools and took an active part in the Mathematical Association.

Ida Busbridge was a superb lecturer; her voice could be heard clearly in the largest lecture theatre; her material was perfectly prepared; her handwriting was immaculate. Her proofs and explanations left nothing to chance.

In 1935, Madge Adam ... became the first of a long line of postgraduate research students in solar physics at the University of Oxford Observatory. The new director of the observatory, Professor H H Plaskett, was about to establish solar physics as its chief research object, and the Sun was Adam's particular interest. Having just found herself in possession of a first, she heard that Plaskett was asking for research students. "So I knocked on his door and said, 'How about me?'." The woman who became a dedicated researcher, internationally known for her work on the nature of sunspots and on their magnetic fields, was to be a key figure at the observatory for the rest of her life.

I should like to express my thanks to Professor H H Plaskett and the Professor E A Milne, from both of whom I have received several long and helpful letters on the subject. To Professor Plaskett I am indebted for the discussion on the darkening near to the limb of the sun ... I should also like to thank members of the University Observatory for their interest in the problem and for helpful criticisms.

Ida Busbridge was an enthusiastic member of the Mathematical Association. She was a member of the Committee which produced the report on the Teaching of Calculus in Schools in 1954, and also of the Committee which prepared the Report on Analysis (Course I in 1957 and Course II in 1962). The Analysis Committee met on Saturday afternoons at St Hugh's and was sustained by wonderful teas which Ida provided. She was President of the Association from 1964 and 1965 and it gave her particular pleasure that the Annual Conference was held in Oxford in 1965 and that her Presidential address was given in the Sheldonian Theatre.

... give every girl or boy the opportunity to develop his or her mathematical powers to the full [and to] foster those of special ability for the sake of the country as a whole for the advancement of knowledge.