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Description area
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History
Sophia Willock was born on 15 Feb 1850, at Sandymount near Dublin, the daughter of Rev W A Willock, Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. She was educated by her father and private governesses. In 1863, the family moved to London where her father took up the post of Professor of Geometry at London University, and in 1866 Sophia became a student at Bedford College.
In 1869 she married Dr W Hicks Bryant of Plymouth. When he died in 1870, she obtained a teaching post at a school for ladies in Highgate, before joining the staff of North London Collegiate School (NLCS), Camden in 1875. In 1895 she was appointed the second Headmistress, succeeding the School's founder Frances Mary Buss.
Bryant was a brilliant scholar and teacher. She was one of three women members of the Royal Commission on Secondary Education. She was one of the first two women to graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree, and the first to obtain a Doctor of Science, awarded in 1884. In 1898 Bryant was the first woman to be elected by the Convocation of London University to the University Senate. She also served on the Technical Education Board and its successor - the Education Committee of the London County Council, representing the Board on the London Polytechnic Council, and was also a member of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education. She also enthusiastically supported teacher training, and was a member of the Board of Studies of Pedagogy at London University, as well as a campaigner for the University's establishment of a chair of education, and chair of the Training College's Council. She was also involved with Goldsmiths' College following its transfer to the University, was honorary director of the Henrietta Barnett School, Hampstead Garden Suburb, and President of the Association of Head Mistresses.
She retired from NLCS in 1918, after 43 years of service. She died in 1922, aged 72 as the result of an accidental fall during a mountaineering holiday near Chamonix, Switzerland.