Sylvia Skan

Sylvia Winifred Skan (15 August 1897 – 10 June 1972) was an English applied mathematician. She is known for her work on aerodynamics, and in particular for the Falkner–Skan boundary layer in the fluid mechanics of airflow past a wedge-shaped obstacle, which she wrote about with V. M. Falkner in 1930, and for the associated Falkner–Skan equation.^[1][2][3]

Skan was born in Bickenhill on 15 August 1897, the oldest of five children of botanist Sidney Alfred Skan [es] and of his wife Jane Alkins. She does not appear to have earned a university degree. By 1923 she was working for the Aerodynamics Department of the National Physical Laboratory, where she carried out the entirety of her career.^[4]

As well as co-authored research papers, 17 of which listed her as first author, her works included translations of research papers from French, German and Russian into English,^[4] and a two-volume single-authored book, Handbook for Computers (1954), describing the mathematics needed for human computers.^[4][5]