Professor Daphne Frances Jackson OBE was born in Peterborough in 1936. She lived in Willesden Avenue and was fortunate to attend Peterborough County Girls School on Lincoln Road (sadly demolished) where she was able to access an excellent education thanks to a progressive headteacher Mona Matthews who believed that girls should receive as solid an education in maths and science as boys did at the time. She insisted on a science laboratory being installed in the school, which has been suggested was the first of its kind in a girls’ school.
Daphne left Peterborough to attend Imperial College London where she studied Physics, graduating in 1958. From there she moved to what became the University of Surrey where she lectured, earning her PhD too. She became the first female Physics Professor in the UK and became Dean of the Faculty of Sciences as well.
From her hard fought position in the upper levels of academia, Professor Jackson was concerned by the number of talented women leaving academia for caring or health reasons and either being unable to return to academic life at all, or having to return in a lower position to the one they had previously on their return. She saw this as a huge injustice and is quoted as saying ‘Imagine a society that would allow Marie Curie to stack shelves in a supermarket simply because she took a career break for family reasons.’ In 1985 she started a scheme called the Women Returners Scheme to allow women to return to the world of scientific research with financial support and flexibility, a first for Britain. The scheme, still running today, has allowed many women to successfully return to work in STEM subjects and has provided a template for other schemes to encourage women to return to careers they had taken a break from.
Professor Jackson was awarded an OBE in 1987 in recognition of her achievements, which included being the Women’s Engineering Society president and the youngest fellow of the Institute of Physics.
Sadly, Professor Jackson was diagnosed with cancer at a young age and passed away in Guildford in 1991 at the age of 54. She left a legacy that was used to create the Daphne Jackson Trust, which provides fellowships for women, and occasionally men, to return to work after a career break. Memorials include a plaque on the home she lived in in Guildford, a road named after her on the University of Surrey campus, and a laboratory dedicated to her at Guildford High School, but she is unknown in her home city at present.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Jackson
https://www.guildford-dragon.com/2017/09/25/guildford-focus-daphne-jackson-woman-proud/
https://daphnejackson.org/about-us/our-history/
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
