Ayrton, Hertha Marks (1854–1923)

views updated

Ayrton, Hertha Marks (1854–1923)

British physicist, noted for work on the motion of waves and formation of sand ripples, and the behavior of the electric arc. Name variations: adopted the name Hertha while at Girton College. Born Phoebe Sarah Marks in Portsmouth, England, in 1854; died in 1923; third of five children of Alice and Levi Marks (a clockmaker and jeweler); attended boarding school, London; Girton College, Cambridge (1876–1880); Finsbury Technical College (1884–1885); married William Edward Ayrton, in 1885; one daughter, Barbara Bodichon (Barbie) Ayrton, 1892.

Hertha Marks Ayrton was a nonconformist from youth, a fact that may well have contributed to her interest in scientific research and invention, fields not widely open to women during the second half of the 19th century. Faced with a male-dominated scientific community all her life, she maintained an ongoing interest in women's suffrage and believed sexism had no place in the laboratory. "The idea of 'women and science' is entirely irrelevant," she once said. "Either a woman is a good scientist, or she is not; in any case she should be given opportunities, and her work should be studied from the scientific, not the sex, point of view."

Ayrton's father, a Polish-Jewish refugee, struggled as a clockmaker to provide for his young family. When he died in 1861, her mother kept food on the table with money from her needlework. Though money was scarce, Ayrton was able to attend boarding school in London because she had an aunt who ran one. In 1876, after failing scholarship exams for Girton College (examinations would consistently prove difficult for her), she was finally able to enter with some financial help from friends. An eccentric philanthropist, Barbara Bodichon , who was interested in women's causes, also became a benefactor. While in college, through her association with a "freethinking" cousin, Ayrton became a religious skeptic, although later in life she would express pride in her Jewish heritage. She also changed her name to Hertha, an expression of new-found independence. Placing a disappointing 15th in her class on the Cambridge University baccalaureate honors examinations, Ayrton left Girton to teach mathematics.

In 1884, bolstered by her success in obtaining a patent for an instrument for dividing lines into any number of equal parts (a boon to architects, engineers, and artists), Ayrton entered Finsbury Technical College, again with the help of Bodichon. There, she met her husband William Edward Ayrton, a professor of physics and a widower, whose first wife, Matilda Chaplin Ayrton (1846–1883), had been a pioneering woman physician. The couple married in 1885, and, with the exception of a series of lectures on electricity delivered in 1888, much of Ayrton's early married life was occupied by domestic duties and caring for her baby daughter Barbara, born in 1892.

In 1893, Ayrton began experiments with electricity, presenting papers on her work while making plans to publish a book. In 1898, she became the first woman member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. However, in 1901, her paper, "The Mechanism of the Electric Arc," had to be read to the Royal Society by an associate of her husband because the society would not allow women to present their work. In that year, she also began investigating ripple marks in sand and finished her book The Electric Arc. Published in 1902, it became the accepted textbook on the subject and cemented her reputation. During the summer of 1903, she met and befriended fellow scientist Marie Curie , who was visiting England.

The Royal Society relented in 1904, and Ayrton became the first woman to present a paper, "The Origin and Growth of Ripple Marks." Although she was not allowed to become a fellow of the Society, in 1906 they awarded her their Hughes Medal for original research.

From 1905 to 1910, Ayrton worked for the War Office and Admiralty on electric searchlights (a project inherited from her husband for which she produced several reports that were ultimately credited to him), and on what would be her last scientific triumph, the invention of the Ayrton fan, which she described as a device that would make it possible "for our men to drive off poisonous gases and bring in fresh air from behind by simply giving impulses to the air with hand fans." After World War I, she researched various industrial applications for the fan.

Until her death in 1923, Ayrton continued her work as a scientist and suffragist. In her later years, she became more militant in her defense of equality for women.