My mother, Daphne Medley, who has died aged 105, was an applied mathematician. As one of the few women researching nuclear physics at the Cavendish laboratory, Cambridge, in the mid-1940s, she mixed with the greats of the field, but went on to prioritise family while pursuing a humbler career as a lecturer.
Between lecturing stints at the universities of Durham and Leeds, Daphne also lent her mathematical modelling skills to textile technology, and wrote an undergraduate textbook, An Introduction to Mechanics and Modelling (1982).
