User:Keilana/Miriam Tildesley

Miriam Louise Tildesley (1883-1979) was an anthropologist. She was born in Walsall Street, Willenhall, Staffordshire on July 1, 1883 to William and Rebecca Tildesley. Her most well-known work is 'Sir Thomas Browne: his skull, portraits and ancestry' which was published in in Biometrika, 15, 1-76, in 1923.

Early Life and Education
Tildesley attended King Edward's Grammar School for Girls (1894-1899) and King Edward's High School for Girls (1899-1902) in Birmingham. Tildesley's parents did not want her to attend college because two of her sisters had already been sent to Girton and Newnham. In 1912, she earned a National Froebel Union certificate after training for two years as a teacher in London. After three years of teaching, she studied wartime statistics with Karl Pearson, a professor and head of the applied statistics department at University College in London. She studied elementary statistical theory and practice in a six-month course. Then, in 1918, she became a Crewdson Benington research student in craniometry for Pearson, who was now head of the biometric laboratory. Her research was published in Biometrika (12, 1921) as "A first study of a Burmese skull."

Career
Tildesley worked for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in 1920 at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, studying human osteological collections with Arthur Keith.

In 1921, Tildesley traveled to Albania for the first time of many with a three month leave from her work in anthropology. She became interested in Albania by Charles Telford Erickson, a friend of hers who had founded a school of agriculture. She became a prominent role in the Friends of Albania Committee. Academic works such as "The Albanian of the north and south" were influenced by her interest in Albania. Her anthropological services led her to be appointed MBE.

In 1923, she was appointed a research assistant and headed the human osteological collection. In the same year, Tildesley published 'Sir Thomas Browne: his skull, portraits and ancestry' with thirty-four plates and a pedigree in Biometrika. Here, she argued that there might not be a correspondence between craniometric data and intelligence through the analysis of a 17th century physician's skull. She became a human osteology curator for the Hunterian Museum. In the 1930s, she became chairman of the Comité de Standardisation de la Technique Anthropolgique. She published many articles in British Dental Journal, 1928, 1-8, regarding the use of teeth in the anthropology and archaeology fields, including "Dentition as a measure of maturity." She was appointed a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1939.

Death
Tildesley died on January 31, 1979 at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. Her body was cremated in the city of Wolverhampton.