1. Phoebe Sarah Hertha Ayrton was an English electrical engineer, mathematician, physicist and inventor, and suffragette.
35 Facts About Hertha Ayrton
1. 2.
Hertha Ayrton was born Phoebe Sarah Marks in Portsea, Hampshire, England, on 28 April 1854.
3.
Hertha Ayrton was the third child of a Polish Jewish watchmaker named Levi Marks, an immigrant from Tsarist Poland; and Alice Theresa Moss, a seamstress, the daughter of Joseph Moss, a glass merchant of Portsea.
4.
Hertha Ayrton's father died in 1861, leaving Sarah's mother with seven children and an eighth expected.
5.
Hertha Ayrton was known to her peers and teachers as a fiery, occasionally crude personality.
6.
Hertha Ayrton constructed a sphygmomanometer, led the choral society, founded the Girton fire brigade, and, together with Charlotte Scott, formed a mathematical club.
7.
In 1880, Hertha Ayrton passed the Mathematical Tripos, but Cambridge did not grant her an academic degree because at the time it did not award full degrees to women.
8.
Hertha Ayrton then passed an external examination at the University of London, which awarded her a Bachelor of Science degree in 1881.
9.
Hertha Ayrton was brought up as Jewish but was agnostic by her teens.
10.
Hertha Ayrton adopted the name "Hertha", first given as a nickname by her friend Ottilie Blind, after the eponymous heroine of a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne that criticised organised religion.
11.
In 1884 Hertha Ayrton patented a line-divider, an engineering drawing instrument for dividing a line into any number of equal parts and for enlarging and reducing figures.
12.
In 1884 Hertha Ayrton began attending evening classes on electricity at Finsbury Technical College, delivered by Professor William Edward Hertha Ayrton, a pioneer in electrical engineering and physics education and a fellow of the Royal Society.
13.
Hertha Ayrton began her own investigation into the characteristics of the electric arc.
14.
In 1895, Hertha Ayrton wrote a series of articles for the Electrician, explaining that these phenomena were the result of oxygen coming into contact with the carbon rods used to create the arc.
15.
Hertha Ayrton's paper was entitled "The Hissing of the Electric Arc".
16.
Shortly thereafter, Hertha Ayrton was elected the first female member of the IEE; the next woman to be admitted to the IEE was Dorothy Smith in 1958.
17.
Hertha Ayrton was the first woman to win a prize from the Society, the Hughes Medal, awarded to her in 1906 in honour of her research on the motion of ripples in sand and water and her work on the electric arc.
18.
Hertha Ayrton spoke at the International Electrical Congress in Paris in 1900.
19.
In 1902, Hertha Ayrton published The Electric Arc, a summary of her research and work on the electric arc, with origins in her earlier articles from the Electrician published between 1895 and 1896.
20.
However, initially at least, Hertha Ayrton was not well received by the more prestigious and traditional scientific societies such as the Royal Society.
21.
Hertha Ayrton's application was turned down by the Council of the Royal Society, who decreed that married women were not eligible to be Fellows.
22.
In 1909 Hertha Ayrton opened the second day of the Knightsbridge "Women's Exhibition and Sale of Work in the Colours" which included new model bicycles painted in purple, white and green and raised from 50 stalls and tea etc.
23.
Hertha Ayrton was with the delegation that went with Emily Pankhurst to see the Prime Minister and met his private secretary instead on 18 November 1910.
24.
Hertha Ayrton permitted Christabel Pankhurst to transfer sums to her bank account to avoid confiscation in 1912, and hosted Pankhurst in times of recovery from imprisonment and force feeding.
25.
Hertha Ayrton was a close friend of the scientist Marie Curie and gave her daughter, Irene Curie, mathematics lessons.
26.
Bodichon helped to make it financially possible for Hertha Ayrton to attend Girton and went on to support her financially throughout her education and career, including bequeathing her estate to Hertha Ayrton.
27.
Hertha Ayrton delivered seven papers before the Royal Society between 1901 and 1926, the last posthumously.
28.
Hertha Ayrton presented the results of her research before audiences at the British Association and the Physical Society.
29.
Hertha Ayrton invented a hand-operated fan to get rid of poisonous gases from the trenches at the front.
30.
Hertha Ayrton spent the rest of her career involved in research to clear noxious vapors from mines and sewers and became involved in the newly founded International Federation of University Women.
31.
Hertha Ayrton helped found the International Federation of University Women in 1919 and the National Union of Scientific Workers in 1920.
32.
Hertha Ayrton died of blood poisoning on 26 August 1923 at New Cottage, North Lancing, Sussex.
33.
In 1885, Hertha Ayrton married the widower William Edward Hertha Ayrton, a physicist and electrical engineer who was supportive of her scientific endeavours.
34.
Hertha Ayrton honoured Barbara Bodichon by naming her first child, a daughter born in 1886, Barbara Bodichon Hertha Ayrton.
35.
Hertha and William Ayrton acted as guardians for artist and suffragette Ernestine Mills after the death of Mills' mother Emily "Mynie" Ernest Bell in 1893.