We would encourage her of course. Every minute spent with the snowdrops was a minute less of mathematics. We might exchange conspiratorial smiles, but we would nevertheless find a moment to go down to the spring gardens and check out the snowdrops.
She was called Miss Woodland. She was a perfect blend of left-brain logic and right-brain intuition, of discipline and joy. She taught us that the elegance of a perfectly balanced equation and the beauty of a wild flower are just two of the countless faces of the same awesome universe. She died before we left school, and there wasn’t a pupil who didn’t mourn her passing.
—Excerpted from Compass Points by Margaret Silf