Hertha Marks Ayrton was a Mathematician, Physicist, and Electrical Engineer. Ayrton was the first female member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and the first woman to ever read her own paper before the Royal Society of London.
Early Life
Phoebe Sarah Marks was born on April 28th 1854 in Portsea, England. Phoebe was the third of eight children. Her father, Levi Marks, was a clockmaker and a jeweler. He had fled Poland as a young man to escape growing anti-Semitic persecution. Levi married Alice, Phoebe's mother, who later after Levi's death had to provide for Phoebe and her brothers and sisters through needlework.
At 9 years old, Phoebe was sent to live with her maternal aunt, Marion Harzog. Marion, along with her husband Alphonse, owned a school where they educated their own children. It was here that Phoebe, who in her teens changed her name to Hertha after the Teutonic Earth Goddess found in Algernon Charles Swinburne's poem "Hertha", was exposed to mathematics by her Cambridge educated cousin, and to philosophy by her Uncle (who mingled with, among others, George Eliot). Although proud of her Jewish heritage, Hertha would forever after her education be an agnostic.
Tutoring, Embroidery, and Charity
During these years of schooling, Hertha tutored and embroidered, sending most of her earnings back to her struggling family (who had lost Levi). Eager to attend University, she received financial assistance through the efforts of Mme. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, a woman passionate in the promotion of higher education for women. Hertha entered Girton College, Cambridge, for women after passing the Cambridge University Examination for Women in 1874 with honors in English and Mathematics and later passed the Mathematical Tripos in 1880. Since at that time Cambridge gave only certificates and not degrees to women, she went on and completed an external examination and received a B.Sc. degree from the University of London in 1881.
Work and Honors
In 1885 Hertha married William Edward Ayrton. They worked together on Physics and Electrical Experiments. Hertha became an acknowledged expert on the subject of the electric arc, being published several times in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London and The Electrician. Hertha also published a book in 1902 called appropriately enough "The Electric Arc". Later that year she was the first woman nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, but was unable to accept the honor due to subtle legal issues regarding the Societies Charter (It wouldn't be until 1943 when the first woman was admitted into the society). Hertha was however the first female member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1899. Furthermore, in 1906 the Royal Society awarded Hertha the Hughes Medal for her experimental investigations on the electrical arc.
Ayrton continued to make contributions to a number of fields until her death on August 23, 1923 and is remembered as an accomplished scientist and inventor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertha_Marks_Ayrton
http://cwp.library.ucla.edu/articles/ayrton/ayrtonbio.html
http://www.agnesscott.edu/LRIDDLE/WOMEN/ayrton.htm
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