23 Facts About Harriet Brooks

Harriet Brooks was the first Canadian female nuclear physicist.

Harriet Brooks is most famous for her research in radioactivity.

Harriet Brooks discovered atomic recoil, and transmutation of elements in radioactive decay.

Harriet Brooks was among the first persons to discover radon and to try to determine its atomic mass.

Harriet Brooks was born in Exeter, Ontario, on July 2,1876, to George and Elizabeth Warden Brooks.

Harriet Brooks then supported the family by working as a commercial traveler for a flour firm.

Harriet Brooks entered McGill University in 1894, the only one beside her sister Elizabeth who would attend university and six years after McGill graduated its first female student.

Harriet Brooks was the first graduate student in Canada of Sir Ernest Rutherford, under whom she worked immediately after graduating.

In 1901, Harriet Brooks obtained a fellowship to study for her doctorate of physics at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.

Rutherford arranged for Harriet Brooks to take this fellowship at his former lab at the University of Cambridge, where she became the first woman to study at the Cavendish Laboratory.

Harriet Brooks saw the irrelevance of advanced degrees in the British context.

In 1903, Harriet Brooks returned to her position at Royal Victoria College and rejoined Rutherford's group, carrying out research that was published in 1904.

In 1905, Harriet Brooks was appointed to the faculty of Barnard College in New York City and for two years she did not research but teach.

Harriet Brooks was backed by the head of Barnard's physics department, Margaret Maltby.

Harriet Brooks broke off her engagement and agreed to stay at Barnard.

In October 1906, Harriet Brooks travelled with Gorky and a group of other Russians to the Italian island of Capri.

However, Harriet Brooks decided to terminate her physics career for unknown reasons, giving room for speculation.

In 1907, at the age of 31, Harriet Brooks married a wealthy engineer of the Montreal Power and Water Company former McGill physics instructor Frank Pitcher, and settled in Montreal.

Harriet Brooks had three children, two of whom tragically died in their teens.

Harriet Brooks's life revolved around domestic life, organizing the activities of household servants.

Harriet Brooks remained active in organizations of university women, but no longer did any work in the field of physics.

Harriet Brooks was the first person to show that the radioactive substance emitted from thorium was a gas with molecular weight of at least 100, a discovery crucial to the determination of transmutation of elements in radioactive decay.

In 2016,110 years after she finished her career, the Harriet Brooks Building, a nuclear research laboratory At Chalk River Laboratories was named after her.