Mary Almond
| Mary Almond | |
|---|---|
| Born | Mary Almond 2 January 1928 Manchester |
| Fields | astronomy, physics, computing, palaeomagnetism |
| Institutions | |
| Alma mater | University of Manchester |
Dr Mary Almond, (born 2 January 1928) is an English physicist, radio astronomer, palaeomagnetist, mathematician, and computer scientist who completed an early PhD in radio astronomy at Jodrell Bank Observatory in 1952.
Almond was born in Manchester and studied for a degree in physics at the University of Manchester from 1946 to 1949, where she was taught by Patrick Blackett and Bernard Lovell.
At the end of their first year of physics lectures, Lovell asked if any of the male students would be interested in spending some time at Jodrell Bank over the summer, digging trenches and mixing concrete and other somewhat physical tasks. After the lecture, Almond went to see him and asked, "Would there be anything for girls to do at Jodrell?" and Lovell said he was sure he could find us something.
Almond and Majorie, an old school friend of Almond’s who was in the same year, spent two weeks working at Jodrell Bank, living at Alderley Edge in a caravan belonging to Almond’s former physics teacher and cycling to Jodrell Bank where they sandpapered rust off the searchlight mount that they were going to attach an aerial to. During these two weeks, Almond also witnessed Manning Prentice doing visual meteor at this time and correlating them with the radar echoes on screen
At this time, there were no permanent radio astronomy buildings on site, just "these old army trailers in a sea of mud."
The following summer Almond returned but lived on site in a tent alongside other young physics students, all of them male. After two summers at Jodrell Bank and after graduating with a 2:1 physics degree from Manchester in 1949, Almond decided to do her PhD in radio astronomy at Jodrell Bank and returned to a site partially transformed with the newly constructed prefab huts and road around ‘the Green’ area as well as the Transit Telescope.
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