Beryl May Dent (10 May 19009 August 1977) was an English mathematical physicist, technical librarian, and a programmer of early analogue and digital computers to solve electrical engineering problems. She was born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, the eldest daughter of schoolteachers. The family left Chippenham in 1901, after her father became head teacher of the then recently established Warminster County School. In 1923, she graduated from the University of Bristol with First Class Honours in applied mathematics. She was awarded the Ashworth Hallett scholarship by the university and was accepted as a postgraduate student at Newnham College, Cambridge.
She returned to Bristol in 1925, after being appointed a researcher in the Physics Department at the University of Bristol, with her salary being paid by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. In 1927, John Lennard-Jones was appointed Professor of Theoretical physics, a chair being created for him, with Dent becoming his research assistant in theoretical physics. LennardJones pioneered the theory of interatomic and intermolecular forces at Bristol and she became one of his first collaborators. They published six papers together from 1926 to 1928, dealing with the forces between atoms and ions, that were to become the foundation of her master's thesis. Later work has shown that the results they obtained had direct application to atomic force microscopy by predicting that noncontact imaging is possible only at small tipsample separations.
In 1930, she joined Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company Ltd, Manchester, as a technical librarian for the scientific and technical staff of the research department. She became active in the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB) and was honorary secretary to the founding committee for the Lancashire and Cheshire branch of the association. She served on various ASLIB committees and made conference presentations detailing different aspects of the company's library and information service. She continued to publish scientific papers, contributing numerical methods for solving differential equations by the use of the differential analyser that was built for the University of Manchester and Douglas Hartree. She was the first to develop a detailed reduced major axis method for the best fit of a series of data points.
Later in her career she became leader of the computation section at MetropolitanVickers, and then a supervisor in the research department for the section that was investigating semiconducting materials. She joined the Women's Engineering Society and published papers on the application of digital computers to electrical design. She retired in 1960, with Isabel Hardwich, later a fellow and president of the Women's Engineering Society, replacing her as section leader for the women in the research department. In 1962, she moved with her mother and sister to Sompting, West Sussex, and died there in 1977.
Early life
Beryl May was born on , at Penley Villa, Park Lane, Chippenham, Wiltshire, the eldest daughter of Agnes Dent (), , and Eustace Edward (). She was baptised at StPaul's, Chippenham, on 8 June 1900. They had married at St Mary's Church, Goosnargh, near Preston, Lancashire, on 27July 1898. Her mother was educated at the Harris Institute, Preston, passing examinations in science and art. She was a teacher at Attercliffe School, in northeast Sheffield, before moving to Goosnargh School, near her hometown of Preston, where her elder brother and sister, John William and Mary Ann Thornley, were the head teachers. In March 1894, she had applied for the headship at Fairfield School, Cockermouth, making the shortlist, but the board decided to appoint a local candidate.
On 18March 1889, Dent's father was appointed to a teaching assistant position at Portland Road School, in Halifax, West Yorkshire, after completing a teaching apprenticeship with the school board. In the same year, Florence Emily Dent, his elder sister, was appointed head teacher at West Vale girls' school, Stainland Road, Greetland, moving from the Higher Board School at Halifax. In August 1889, he obtained a first class pass in mathematics from the Halifax Mechanics' Institute. He enrolled on a degree course at University College, Aberystwyth, in the Education Day Training College. In January 1894, he was awarded a first by Aberystwyth, and a first in the external University of London examinations. His first teaching post was at Coopers' Company Grammar School, Bow, London, before moving to Chippenham, where he was a senior assistant teacher at the Chippenham County School.