25 Facts About Margaret Gowing

Margaret Gowing was the first occupant of a chair in the history of science at the University of Oxford, which she held from 1972 until her retirement in 1986.

Margaret Gowing had an older sister, Audrey, and an older brother, Donald.

Margaret Gowing attended Portobello Elementary School in North Kensington, and won a London County Council scholarship to Christ's Hospital in 1932.

Margaret Gowing excelled academically, was a prefect, and played hockey for her house.

Margaret Gowing won a Leverhulme Entry Scholarship to the London School of Economics, which she entered in 1938.

Margaret Gowing won both the Gladstone Memorial Prize and the Lillian Knowles Scholarship for economic history in 1939.

Margaret Gowing subsequently moved to the Board of Trade, and the Directorate of Housing Fitments, where she rose to the rank of Assistant Principal, before moving to the Cabinet Office in 1945.

Margaret Gowing came to know personally many of the politicians and senior civil servants involved.

Margaret Gowing was a vocalist who had attended Christ's Hospital before winning a choral scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, in 1939.

Margaret Gowing had joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1941, and was serving at Combined Operations Headquarters.

Margaret Gowing was taught Japanese in the United States and went on serve in the Pacific as a translator.

The marriage bar was suspended for the duration and Margaret Gowing was allowed to remain in the Civil Service.

In 1950, Sir Norman Brook attempted to have Margaret Gowing retained in the Cabinet Office as the permanent historian, but was stymied by the Treasury and the Civil Service Commission.

Margaret Gowing later said that her years at the Cabinet Office were the happiest of her life, but she began looking for another position.

Margaret Gowing knew little about atomic energy; she once remarked that when she was appointed, she "didn't know an atom from a molecule".

In 1966, Margaret Gowing became Reader in Contemporary History at the new University of Kent, Canterbury, covering scientific, technical, economic and social history.

Margaret Gowing attempted to negotiate better conditions at the University of Kent that would allow more time to work on the books, but this was denied.

Margaret Gowing applied for a vacant chair in the History and Philosophy of Science at University College London in 1970, without success.

Margaret Gowing did not expect to get the chair, but Peierls, Sir Frederick Dainton and Hugh Trevor-Roper were on the selection panel, and in the end offered the chair in the history of science to Gowing, a woman who did not have a degree in history or science.

Margaret Gowing was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1975, and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1981.

Margaret Gowing received honorary doctorates in literature from the University of Leeds in 1976, the University of Leicester in 1982, and Manchester in 1985, and in science from the University of Bath in 1987.

Margaret Gowing never got around to writing a planned sequel to Independence and Deterrence that would take the story up 1958, when the nuclear Special Relationship between Britain and the United States resumed.

Margaret Gowing was a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 1978 to 1992.

Margaret Gowing began suffering from what was most likely Alzheimer's disease, and retired from Oxford in 1986, two years before the official retirement age.

Margaret Gowing died at Kingston Hospital in Kingston upon Thames on 7 November 1998.