Phyllis Nicolson

Phyllis Nicolson ( born September 21, 1917 in Macclesfield, England; † October 6, 1968 in Sheffield, England) was an English mathematician. Her best-known work is the Crank- Nicolson method, which they developed in collaboration with John Crank.

She was born Phyllis Lockett in Maccelesfield in England and attended high school in Stockport. At the University of Manchester in 1938, it reached the B.Sc., a year later, the M.Sc. and Ph.D. in 1946.

From 1940 to 1945 she worked under Douglas Rayner Hartree in a research group in Manchester for the Ministry of Supply the British government. From 1945 to 1949 she worked in research at Girton College, Cambridge. Together with John Crank, she developed a solution for the heat equation, the Crank- Nicolson method.

In 1942, she married Malcolm Nicolson, a day before her 30th birthday, she had her first child. After her husband died in a train accident in 1952, she took over his lectureship in physics at the University of Leeds. In 1956 she married the physicist Malcolm McCaig.