Florence Newman Trefethen

Florence Marion Newman Trefethen (1921–2012) was an American codebreaker, historian of operations research, poet, and English professor.

Early life and education

Florence Marion Newman was born in 1921, in Philadelphia.[1] She graduated magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College in 1943.[2]

She enlisted as a Naval officer during World War II, and served in the WAVES as a codebreaker. She was part of the Magic project, whose decryptions of Japanese communications led to the ambush and death of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.[1][3] During this service she met Merchant Marine and later mechanical engineer Lloyd M. Trefethen;[3] they married in 1944.[4]

After the war, she came to Girton College, Cambridge on an Ottilie Hancock Bye Fellowship. She earned a Master of Letters there in 1946.[1]

Career and later life

Trefethen worked for many years as a professor of English at Tufts University,[3] and served for 18 years as executive editor for the Council of East Asian Studies at Harvard University.[1]

She and her husband had had two children, quilter Gwyned Trefethen in 1953 and mathematician Lloyd N. Trefethen in 1955.[1][5] She died on March 1, 2012.[1]

Books

With Joseph F. McCloskey, Trefethen edited the book Operations Research for Management (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954).[6] She wrote the first chapter of the book, an early history of the field of operations research.[7]

She is also the author of Writing a Poem (The Writer, 1970), on the process of writing poetry.[8]

References
  1. "Trefethen", The Annual Review of Girton College, 2012, 2013, p. 97
  2. "Graduate and undergraduate degrees are conferred", The College News, 29 (25), p. 3, June 8, 1943
  3. Gittleman, Sol (November 11, 2013), "The Quiet Men: Sol Gittleman, the university's former provost, remembers Tufts' postwar veteran-professors, the unsung heroes of academia", Tufts Now
  4. Astill, Ken; Nelson, Fred; Humphrey, Joseph A. C. (1999), "Dedication to Lloyd MacGregor Trefethen on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday", Journal of Fluids Engineering, {ASME} International, 121 (1): 3, doi:10.1115/1.2822008
  5. "Trefethen, Prof. Lloyd Nicholas, (Nick)", Who's Who 2019, Oxford University Press, 2019, doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U37988
  6. Review of Operations Research for Management:
    • Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, Wiley, 1 (4): 337, December 1954, doi:10.1002/nav.3800010417CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
    • Swager, William L. (February 1955), Journal of the Operations Research Society of America, 3 (1): 127–129, JSTOR 166740CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
    • R. T. E. (June 1955), OR, 6 (2): 88, doi:10.2307/3007645, JSTOR 3007645CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
    • Lathrop, John B. (October 1955), Science, New Series, 122 (3172): 695–696, JSTOR 1752098CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
    • Rivett, B. H. P. (1956), Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 119 (1): 94–95, doi:10.2307/2342975, JSTOR 2342975CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
    • Dorfman, Robert (January 1956), Econometrica, 24 (1): 94–95, doi:10.2307/1905270, JSTOR 1905270CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
    • Karlin, Samuel (June 1956), Journal of the American Statistical Association, 51 (274): 391–392, doi:10.2307/2281366, JSTOR 2281366CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
    • Prager, W. (January 1957), Quarterly of Applied Mathematics, 14 (4): 440, JSTOR 43636028CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
  7. The origins of OR, INFORMS, retrieved 2019-05-11
  8. Reviews of Writing a Poem:
    • Rybicki, Steve (Spring 1971), RQ, 10 (3): 282, JSTOR 25824268CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
    • Jenkins, Paul (May 1971), College Composition and Communication, 22 (2): 193–194, doi:10.2307/356843, JSTOR 356843CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
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