My mother, Daphne Gilbert, who has died aged 80, was a respected mathematics professor. She defied the expectations foisted on most women of her generation, successfully combining an outstanding career in teaching and research with bringing up four children.
Having married at the age of 19 in the early 1960s, Daphne put her work ambitions on hold for many years until her children had become teenagers. Restarting her education, she went on to become a maths lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, later moving to Ireland to be head of pure and applied mathematics at the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), where she was awarded a professorship shortly before her retirement.
