Tideman Mrs. LeFevre

The highest-profile spouse-collaborator was Catherine (Cathie) Gunn Tideman. Bom in Glasgow on 1 November 1909, she went to UCL to study chemistry,44 and it was there that the physical organic chemist Raymond LeFevre noticed her  

A romance soon developed, with the marriage taking place in 1931. Tideman became LeFevre s long-term research colleague, coauthoring papers and reviews under the name of C. G. LeFevre. 

Much of the careful laboratory work was performed by Tideman, such as that which led to the validation of the molar Kerr constant as a numerical criterion for the discrimination between often closely related molecular configurations.46 Tideman s son, Ian, was bom in 1938 and shortly afterwards, Tideman became a Demonstrator in Chemistry at UCL and also taught chemistry at Queen s College, Harley Street (see Chap. 4). She had a second child, Nicolette, in 1940. As a result of Tideman s research contributions at UCL, she was awarded a D.Sc. (London) in 1960. 

The LeFevres departed for the University of Sydney in 1946, and there, in addition to continuing research on the Kerr effect, Tideman developed broader interests. She became involved with social issues, particularly drug dependency and the drug problem in New South Wales. Later, she became involved in forensic science issues, becoming the first woman elected to the Council of the Australian Academy of Forensic Sciences.47 She was also heavily involved in programmes to encourage women into science. Tideman died in Sydney on 9 March 1998. 

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