12 Facts About Dorothy Whitelock

Edward died in 1903 but despite financial struggles, Dorothy Whitelock was able to attend the Leeds Girls' High School.

Dorothy Whitelock was a promising student at school and it came as no surprise when in 1921 she went up to Newnham College, Cambridge at the age of 19, where she was one of only four students in her year to study for Section B of the English Tripos under Hector Munro Chadwick.

Dorothy Whitelock gained a First in Part I and a Second in Part II.

Dorothy Whitelock went on to postgraduate work, as Marion Kennedy Student at Newnham, Cambridge University Scandinavian Student at Uppsala, and the first woman to receive the Allen Scholarship at Cambridge.

Dorothy Whitelock was elected vice-president of the Society for Medieval Archaeology from its formation in 1957, serving until 1963.

Notwithstanding these successes, Dorothy Whitelock found herself frustrated by a male-dominated academy which often favoured male scholars at the expense of talented female academics.

In 1945, following her failure to secure a professorship at the University of Liverpool, Whitelock applied for the Rawlinson and Bosworth professorship of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, a chair that had been vacated by JR R Tolkien.

Dorothy Whitelock was unsuccessful; Tolkien himself had voted against her.

Dorothy Whitelock's achievements were finally recognised in 1956, when she was elected a fellow of the British Academy.

In 1957, Dorothy Whitelock returned to Cambridge, where she had begun her career, succeeding Bruce Dickins as Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon.

Dorothy Whitelock retired in 1969, but continued to publish scholarship and serve the academic community, chairing the Sylloge Committee from 1967 to 1978 and elected a President of the English Place Name Society from 1967 to 1979.

Dorothy Whitelock had strokes in 1980 and 1981, and died on 14 August 1982.