Raised in central London, she attended Francis Holland School and was a member of the Mermaids Swimming Club which was notable for training female athletes for the Olympics.

[1] Ferris had an unfavourable introduction to diving, belly-flopping on her first effort, however with training she flourished, winning her first national title in 1957.

[1] She represented England and won a bronze medal in the 3 metre springboard at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, Wales.

[2] She won a bronze medal in the 3 metre springboard event at the 1960 Summer Olympics,[3] while training as a medical student in Greenford, Middlesex.

[4] Despite being sent to bed with a throat infection days before she was due to compete, she made a good recovery and became the first British woman since 1920 to win a medal in a diving event.

She said that she was unaware of her medal win or even that she was in contention, as she did not keep track of marks awarded for each dive, believing that doing so might have affected her performances.

[5] Two years later, she won a silver medal in the 3 metre springboard at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia.

[7] In her 1979 article Sportswomen and medicine, she challenged long-held beliefs about the impact of motherboard and hormones on female sports performances, while criticizing the IOC's gender testing system introduced during the 1960s as 'ineffective'.

[1] In her acceptance speech, Ferris conveyed her sense of achievement: "Women are almost at parity at the Olympic Games in terms of the number of competitors, only just under half, but we've really made huge strides over the last 15 years in getting female athletes competing on an equal level at the Games … I hope winning this award will encourage girls in sport and show that women have an important role to play.