Eleanor Pairman was born in Lasswade, which is about six miles south-east of the centre of the city of Edinburgh. Broomieknowe is an area of Lasswade. She began her schooling at Lasswade Higher Grade School in 1903, remaining there for five years. Then in 1908 she entered George Watson's Ladies' College in Edinburgh. Her performance at the school was outstanding and, in 1912, she won a George Watson School Bursary entitling her to free education for session 1912-13 and an allowance of £10.
Pairman sat the Scottish Leaving Certificate examinations passing Lower Dyamics and Lower Science, with Higher passes in English, French, Latin, Mathematics, and Analytical Geometry. In July 1914 she became dux of George Watson's Ladies College. She also won the George Watson Higher Bursary of £80 and the Special Prize for Mathematics. She matriculated at the University of Edinburgh, beginning her studies in session 1914-15 after winning a John Welsh Mathematical Bursary.
In her first year at Edinburgh University she studied Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and Logic. The First Year Chemistry Course was taught by James Walker, and Pairman did well, but not brilliantly, being ranked Second Class. Similarly in the Laboratory Chemistry course taught by Leonard Dobbin she was ranked Second Class. However, her performance in mathematics was outstanding. In July 1915 she was awarded the Newton Bursary in Mathematics (placed equal with Samuel Allen). In the Second Ordinary Class in mathematics, taught by Lester R Ford, she was placed second to Samuel Allen and was awarded a class medal. She continued her studies taking honours in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy and was awarded an M.A. with First Class Honours in July 1917. She was also awarded a Vans Dunlop Scholarship in Mathematics.
Leaving Edinburgh, Pairman went to London where she worked for a year for Karl Pearson as a computer (at this time computers were people and not machines!). It was a highly productive year for not only did she produce a substantial joint publication with Karl Pearson On corrections for the moment-coefficients of limited range frequency distributions when there are finite or infinite ordinates and any slopes at the terminals of the range which appeared in Biometrika (November 1919), but she also wrote Tracts for Computers which was published by Cambridge University Press (1 January 1920).
From London, Pairman went to the United States to undertake research at Radcliffe College, a women's college associated with Harvard University. Her thesis advisor was George Birkhoff and after submitting her thesis Expansion Theorems for Solution of a Fredholm's Linear Homogeneous Integral Equation of the Second Kind with Kernel of Special Non-Symmetric Type she was awarded a Ph.D. in 1922.
Pairman joined the Edinburgh Mathematical Society in January 1917, but after about five years informed the Society that her name was now Mrs Eleanor Pairman Brown. She remained a member for around 16 years.
Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
November 2007