Dame Mary Cartwright died on 3 April 1998 in Cambridge, England, aged 97.
Dame Mary Lucy Cartwright died on 3 April 1998 in Cambridge, England, at the age of 97, closing out a remarkable life that spanned nearly the entire twentieth century and its transformation of women's roles in science and mathematics.
By the time of her death, Cartwright had long been recognized as one of Britain's foremost mathematicians. Her research with J. E. Littlewood on nonlinear differential equations, originally undertaken to solve practical problems in radio and radar amplifier circuits during World War II, was later recognized as some of the earliest rigorous mathematical work anticipating what became known as chaos theory—decades before the term was coined.
She had served as Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, from 1948 to 1968, was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1969, and in 1947 became the first woman mathematician elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. She also became the first woman president of both the London Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association.
Her death marked the end of an era for British mathematics, but her legacy endures through the Cartwright–Littlewood theorem, her contributions to dynamical systems theory, and her role as a trailblazer who demonstrated that rigorous mathematical genius knew no gender, inspiring generations of women to pursue careers in mathematics and science.