Sargent's first publication was in 1929, ''On Young's criteria for the convergence of Fourier series and their conjugates
, published in the Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.'' In 1931 she was appointed an Assistant Lecturer at
Westfield College and became a member of the
London Mathematical Society in January 1932. in 1936 she moved to
Royal Holloway, University of London, at the time both women's colleges. In 1939 she became a doctoral student of
Lancelot Bosanquet, but
World War II broke out, preventing his formal supervision from continuing. In 1941 Sargent was promoted to lecturer at Royal Holloway, moving to
Bedford College in 1948. She served on the
Mathematical Association teaching committee from 1950 to 1954. In 1954 she was awarded the degree of Sc.D. (
Doctor of Science) by Cambridge and was given the title of
Reader. While at the
University of London she supervised Alan J. White in 1959. Bosanquet started a weekly seminar in mathematics in 1947, which Sargent attended without absence for twenty years until her retirement in 1967. She rarely presented at it, and did not attend mathematical conferences, despite being a compelling speaker. == Mathematical results ==