SWIRLES, Bertha (1903–1999)

[Five volumes from Bertha Swirles working career in quantum physics and astrophysics, 1925–1965, with numerous sheets of calculations]

BOOKS AND DOCUMENTS FROM THE LIFE OF BERTHA SWIRLES/JEFFRIES (1903–1999)

SWIRLES, Bertha (her copy); FEDOROV, E.P., Nutatsiya i Vynuzhdennoye Dvizheniye Polyusov (Kiev: ussr Academy of Sciences), 1958. First edition [together with:] four other volumes from Swirles’ working collection: 5 vols total; various paginations; numerous manuscript sheets laid in.

The working copy of Fedorov’s classic work on nutation (variations in the axis of an orbiting body), used by Bertha Swirles (1903–1999) in the preparation of her translation of the book, published in 1963 by Macmillan as Nutation And Forced Motion Of The Earth’s Pole. Offered with four other volumes bearing Swirles’ signature, containing many pages of notes with equations and some other ms writings.

Bertha Swirles began her career as a mathematical physicist as part of an extraordinary group in Cambridge, alongside Paul Dirac and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, before studying at Göttingen with Max Born and Werner Heisenberg. Her initial research focused on the problems of the absorption of radition by gases – highly technical work that allowed her to combine extensive calculation with quantum theory, and practical application (to the study of stellar structure).

The earliest item here, a proof copy of Searle’s Experimental Optics (1925), was likely used by Swirles during her first period at Girton. Her copy, with bookplate, of Lagally’s Vektor-Rechnung probably dates from her time at Göttingen. Two later volumes – Problems in Quantum Mechanics (1961) and the non-scientific The Bradlaugh Case (1965) – contain loose sheets of calculations (The Bradlaugh Case bears on family matters – as indicated by a draft letter, pleasingly written on the back of a sheet of calculations).

By the time she translated Fedorov’s book Swirles had married the geophysicist Harold Jeffreys – the two co-authored the standard work Methods of Mathematical Physics, published in 1946. Nutation was a subject of great interest to Harold Jeffreys – but during the course of their marriage Swirles also conducted research into seismology, and so the convergence of their interests is not altogether surprising. There are annotations to 49 pages, as well as four sheets of calculations laid in.

All volumes in good condition; wear to jackets; the Fedorov somewhat fragile.