Sarah Woodhead

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Sarah Woodhead (1851–1908) was the first woman to take and pass a Tripos exam, specifically the Mathematical Tripos in 1873. From a Quaker family, she studied at Ackworth School and then at Girton College through courses arranged by Emily Davies at Benslow House, Hitchin, since the college building wasn’t ready.

In 1873 she sat the Mathematical Tripos with the male students and was classified as Senior Optime in mathematics, having already earned a first at Part I. She became the first woman to take and pass the Mathematical Tripos, and one of the first three women at Girton to complete any Tripos; they were known as "Woodhead, Cook and Lumsden, the Girton Pioneers."

She married architect Christopher Corbett and ran a school in Bolton, later becoming the second headmistress of Bolton School (Bolton High School for Girls). When her husband moved the family back to Manchester to run his firm, she worked as an inspector of schools. Widowed in her fifties, she moved to Harrogate and died there in July 1908, aged 57.