Review
Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923), suffragette, electrical engineer, and inventor, was the first woman member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) and the first to read her own paper. In 1902, she was proposed as a Fellow of the Royal Society but was not accepted because she was a married woman. In 1906, she was awarded the Hughes Medal for her major contributions to the study of the electric arc. Several patents derived from her research on the electric arc between 1913 and 1914. His findings were published in the book Arc Electric, a reference book in Europe during the first half of the 20th century. She invented the Ayrton fan, used by British troops in France to clear the trenches of poisonous gases used by the German army during the First World War.
Justifications
- In 1899, she was the first woman to read her own paper before the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE).
- First female member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE); there wasn't another one until 1958.
- Her studies on the electric arc led to its application in electric lighting.
- Her compilation book, Arc Electric, about her studies on electric arcs became a reference book.
- She was the only woman to participate in the International Electrical Congress held in Paris in 1900.
- She was the first woman to receive the Hughes Medal, awarded in 1906 in recognition to her research on the formation of waves in dunes by ocean waves and her work on the electric arc.
- She made several inventions on mathematical dividers, arc and electrode lamps and air propulsion.
Biography
Hertha Marks Ayrton was born Phoebe Sarah Ayrton on 28 April 1854 in Hampshire, England. Her parents were Levi Marks, a Polish watchmaker of Jewish origins, and Alice Theresa Moss, a seamstress. Hertha abandoned Judaism and declared herself an agnostic. In 1863, she travelled to London to study at the school run by her aunt Marion Hartog’s husband, where she learned French, music, mathematics, and Latin. At the age of 16, she started giving private lessons to help her family financially.
She studied mathematics in Girton College, in Cambridge. During this period she conducted a choir and founded a mathematics club. After passing her exams in 1880, she sat an examination at the University of London and was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1881. She taught mathematics at Notting Hill and Ealing High School. She published several papers on mathematics in Mathematical questions and their solution in the Educational Times.
In 1884, she patented her first major invention, a drawing instrument, which was used to divide a line into any number of equal parts and also to enlarge and reduce figures. She attended evening classes at Finsbury Technical College to learn about electricity. Her teacher, William Edward Ayrton, was a pioneer in physics and electrical engineering, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Hertha and William married in 1885.
Then, Hertha began her research into the electric arc, which was widely used during this period for street lighting, although it emitted whistling noises. She published her findings in 1895 in The Electrician and four years later, at a conference at the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), being the first woman to present a paper there. Shortly afterwards, the IEE appointed Hertha as their first female member. In 1899, she was president of the Physics section at the International Congress of Women in London. A year later she took part in the International Electrical Congress in Paris, and as a result, the British Association for the Advancement of Science accepted women as members of committees, both general and particular.
In 1901, the Royal Society did not allow women to read a paper to a professional audience, and Hertha had to have John Perry present her project “The Mechanism of the Electric Arc”. A year later, she was nominated for membership in the Royal Society, which the Council rejected because she was a married woman. She was finally able to read her paper The Origin and Growth of Ripple Marks at the Royal Society in 1904.
In 1906, she received the Hughes Medal, which recognised her research on wave formation in dunes and ocean waves, as well as her work on the electric arc. She was the fifth person to obtain this award and, until 2013, one of the two only women to have been awarded it. Her husband, William Ayrton, died in 1908.
She supported the suffragette movement and was an important activist. In her later years, she focused on the study of air movement, patenting a device to dissipate poisonous gases that would be used in the First World War. In addition, she carried out studies on hydrodynamics. She joined the Labour Party and helped set up the International Federation of University Women in 1919 and the National Union of Scientific Workers in 1920. Hertha Ayrton filed 26 patents: five on mathematical dividers, 13 on arc lamps and electrodes, and the rest on air propulsion. She died on 26 August 1923, in Sussex, of sepsis, due to an infection from a mosquito bite.
"Archives Biographies: Hertha Ayrton", Institution of Engineering and Technology, (13-02-2022), <https://www.theiet.org/membership/library-archives/the-iet-archives/biographies/hertha-ayrton/?utm_source=redirect&utm_medium=legacyredirects&utm_campaign=2019relaunch>
Works
The electric arc (1902), (13-02-2022),<https://archive.org/details/electricarc00ayrtrich>
"The mechanism of the electric arc" (1902), Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical or Physical Character,199, Issue 312-320, pp. 299-336. (31-11-2022), <https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.1098/rsta.1902.0016>
“On the Non-Periodic or Residual Motion of Water Moving in Stationary Waves” (1908), Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical and Physical Character, 80, Issue 538, pp. 252–260, (31-11-2022), <https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.1098/rspa.1908.0022 >
“The Origin and Growth of Ripple-mark” (1910), Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical and Physical Character, 84, Issue 571, pp. 285-310, ( 31-11-2022), <https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.1098/rspa.1910.0076>
“On a New Method of Driving off Poisonous Gases” (1919),Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical and Physical Character, 96, Issue 676, pp. 249-256, (31-11-2022), <https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.1098/rspa.1919.0051>
Bibliography
Fara, Patricia (2017). “Case Study: Hertha Ayrton”, en Pooran Wynarczyk y Marina Ranga (eds.) Technology, Commercialization and Gender. A Global Perspective. Basingstoke: Springer International Publishing, pp. 235-244.
Ossicini, Stefano (2015). “Marie Curie, Hertha Ayrton e le altre. Donne e scienziate”. Scienze e Ricerche, nº 5 suplemento, pp. 25-36, (13-02-2022), <https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/ayrton-hertha-marks>
Mason, Joan (1991). “Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923) and the Admission of Women to the Royal Society of London”, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 45, nº 2, pp. 201–20, (13-02-2022), <https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsnr.1991.0019>
Ossicini, Stefano (2015). “Marie Curie, Hertha Ayrton e le altre. Donne e scienziate”. Scienze e Ricerche, nº 5 suplemento, pp. 25-36, (13-02-2022),
Sharp, Evelyn (1926). Hertha Ayrton: A Memoir. London: Edward Arnold.
"Archives Biographies: Hertha Ayrton", Institution of Engineering and Technology, (13-02-2022), <https://www.theiet.org/membership/library-archives/the-iet-archives/biographies/hertha-ayrton/?utm_source=redirect&utm_medium=legacyredirects&utm_campaign=2019relaunch>
Didactic approach
Physics and Chemistry. Blocks: Energy and interaction (electrical nature of matter, electrical phenomena).
In Technology, when studying the uses of energy, you could make an Edison lamp and an electric arc to see the differences.
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