Hertha Ayrton 1854 – 1923
(born Phoebe Sarah Marks)
File:Helena Arsène Darmesteter – Portrait of Hertha Ayrton.jpg – Wikimedia Commons
Physicist, mathematician, electrical engineer, inventor, suffragist.
28 April 1854 – 1923
Hertha Ayrton – a Tribute by Elizabeth Bruton
Hertha Ayrton was a British suffragist, physicist, mathematician and inventor in a time when few women had access to opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Born Sarah Phoebe Marks in Portsmouth in 1854 to a relatively poor immigrant family of Polish Jewish origin, Ayrton was supported in her education and professional ambitions, first by wealthier family members and later the wider suffrage community – almost all of them women. Throughout her life, she was an active member of the suffrage community in London and internationally, arguing for the right for women to vote.
Ayrton lived in London for most of her life. Her connections with London, especially the suffrage communities and educational establishments, including the University of London in Bloomsbury as well as the Institution of Electrical Engineering (now IET). These played significant roles in her life, career and achievements. Between 1903 and her death in 1923, Ayrton lived at 41 Norfolk Square, Paddington, now noted by an English Heritage blue plaque.
Ayrton first moved to the capital in 1863 aged nine when she was invited by her maternal aunt Marion Hartog, a renowned English Jewish writer and teacher who ran a school in north-west London with her husband Alphonse Hartog, to live with her cousins and to be educated with them. It was through her cousins that Ayrton was introduced to science and mathematics and, by the time she was sixteen, she was living independently and working as a governess.
Ayrton had grander ambitions though and was determined to study at Cambridge University, despite the fact that the university did not award degrees to women. In 1874, Ayrton passed the Cambridge University Examination for women with honours in English and Mathematics. Two years later, Ayrton studied mathematics at Girton College, one of the few all-female colleges at Cambridge University. She was able to attend thanks to the financial support from fellow members of feminist and social justice communities, where she was an active participant.
Ayrton was also an active member of the Girton College community: she was the leader of the College Choral Society, founded the college fire brigade and also founded a mathematics club. Ayrton graduated with a third-class degree in 1880. The low grade was partly as a result of illness during her exams. In 1881, she was awarded in external BSc from the University of London as Cambridge University did not award degrees to women until 1948.
As a student at Cambridge, Ayrton began working on her first invention: a line-divider. This is a mathematical tool and engineering drawing instrument and Ayrton patented the device after she graduated in 1884. It was the first of twenty-six patents she was granted during her lifetime. The line divider was positively reviewed by users and in the scientific press but was not a commercial success.
In the early 1880s, Ayrton moved to London where she would live for the rest of her life and in 1884 she began attending evening classes and studied electricity and physics at Finsbury Technical College. Ayrton studied electro-technics (electricity and physics) at the college where she was just one of three women studying alongside 118 men. Ayrton’s lecturers included physics expert and renowned electrical engineer Professor William Edward (Will) Ayrton.
The two were married in 1885, a year after they met. One year later, they had a daughter, Barbara Bodichon, named after Ayrton’s mentor and supporter. In 1891, Ayrton’s mentor and her daughter’s namesake Barbara Bodichon died. Bodichon left Ayrton a sum of money which enabled Ayrton to support her ageing mother and to hire a housekeeper so that she might dedicate more time and energy to her research.
In the early 1890s, Ayrton began researching the properties of electric arcs. At first, she began by assisting her husband with his research but soon she took over the research. Thereafter, she made notable contributions to the development and understanding of the electric arc, an early and powerful form of electric lighting.
Ayrton established two key points in relation to the working of electric arcs. Firstly, she discovered that the problems with electric arc lighting such as hissing, flickering and instability were the result of oxygen coming into contact with the carbon rods used to create the arc.
Secondly, Ayrton discovered that when oxygen was excluded, a steady arc was obtained and hence she was able to establish a linear relationship between arc length, pressure, and potential difference, the ‘Ayrton equation’.
Between 1895 and 1896, Ayrton published a series of twelve articles on her analysis, research and technical advances in the field of electric arc lighting in The Electrician, the premier electrical engineering periodical of the age. With these articles, she overtook her husband’s earlier work in this field and established her own credentials as an expert on the workings of the electric arc and in the field of electrical engineering more generally.
This recognition led to increased opportunities including the invitation to deliver her own paper on electric arcs before the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE, now IET). She was the first woman to read her own paper before this prestigious engineering society.
In 1899, Ayrton was elected a member of the institution (MIEE), a prestigious and widely recognised professional qualification. Thus, Ayrton became the first female member of the IEE and the first professionally recognised female electrical engineer.
Contrastingly, in 1902 Ayrton was nominated for election as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), perhaps the most prestigious form of scientific recognition in Britain if not the world at the time. She was, however, not accepted as married women had no legal status due to coverture. ‘We are of the opinion that married women are not eligible as Fellows of the Royal Society. Whether the Charters admit of the election of unmarried women appears to us to be very doubtful.’ Nonetheless a few years later in 1906, Ayrton was awarded the Hughes Medal by the Royal Society for her work on electric arcs and ripple marks in sand and water with the latter being an example of Ayrton’s broad research interests.
In 1907, Ayrton and her daughter Barbara both joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WPSU), the direct-action women’s suffrage organisation founded by Emmeline Pankhurst and others with the motto ‘Deeds not words. Ayrton made regular financial contributions to the organisation and, more generally, was also a strong advocate for other women in science, most notably as an out-spoken champion and supporter of Marie Curie. After Curie’s husband’s death in 1909, Pierre Curie and not Marie Curie was claimed as the discoverer of radium. This falsehood was endorsed in the British press. Perhaps reflecting on her personal experience of her scientific successes being attributed to her husband, Ayrton wrote a letter to the Westminster Gazette in March 1909, noting ‘Errors are notoriously hard to kill, but an error that ascribes to a man what was actually the work of a woman has more lives than a cat.’
Between 1911 and 1913, Ayrton was kept busy with the suffragette movement, marching on many, if not all, of the most militant suffrage marches in London. In parallel with Ayrton’s increasingly active and public role in the women’s suffrage campaign as well as the wider social justice movement, she continued her broad research interests expanded her research into the scientific and mathematical understanding of water and air vortices, later resulting in a life-saving application used during the First World War.
After the German Army first used poison gas at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915, many British scientists quickly began to adapt their research to counteracting this new and deadly weapon. In early May 1915 and shortly after the news of German use of gas had reached England, Ayrton presented a paper on differences in pressure near obstacles in moving water and began to consider how this might have practical application in terms of removing gas from the trenches.
Ayrton developed the ‘Ayrton anti-gas fan’, a simple hand-held device used to clear poisonous chemical gases from British frontline trenches during the First World War. Ayrton’s anti-gas fan was simple and consisted of a sheet of waterproof canvas supported and stiffened by a frame of cane and held by a hickory handle.
By mid-May 1915, Ayrton had developed a working model which she tested out on her friend and fellow suffragist Ernestine Mill’s back garden in Kensington. The War Office initially dismissed her invention but, by 1917, Ayrton had developed an improved mechanical version of her fan. After some delay, it was brought into use by the British Army and eventually over 100,000 Ayrton anti-gas fans were ordered. The fans were used to clear trenches, dug-outs and shell holes, and mine craters of poisonous gases although there was some dispute as to their true effectiveness.
Much of Ayrton’s achievements and successes were the result of the support she received early in her life from an active community of women, feminists and suffragettes and the support she gave in return which continued after suffrage was granted to some women in Britain in 1919. Ayrton was a founding member of the International Federation of University Women (founded in 1919) and the National Union of Scientific Workers (founded in 1920); she also served as vice-president of the British Federation of University Women and vice-president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Additionally, Ayrton was an early member of the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) founded in 1919 although she was not directly involved in its establishment. In her role as a public and respected figure, Ayrton’s support for social justice was invaluable to this cause. Although it took valuable time away from her scientific research, Ayrton devoted increasing time to women’s and social causes particularly in her later years until her death in 1923 aged 69.
Throughout her lifetime and with the strong support of her feminist communities, Ayrton made an immense and diverse contribution to mathematics, physics and electrical engineering. Spanning four decades and three subject areas – mathematics, electrical engineering and physics – these accomplishments demonstrate the deep impact Ayrton had on these specialist technical and scientific subjects as well as on the emerging roles available to women in engineering.
This blog is an adapted version of Celebrating the life of Hertha Ayrton, a Science Museum blog post written by Elizabeth Bruton in 2020.
Dr Elizabeth Bruton is a science communicator and former museum curator. Her research interests include history of telecommunications, women in STEM past and present, military history, and intelligence history.
Further reading
Bruton, Elizabeth, 2020, ‘Celebrating the life of Hertha Ayrton’, Science Museum blog https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/celebrating-the-life-of-hertha-ayrton/
Bruton, Elizabeth, 2018, ‘The life and material culture of Hertha Marks Ayrton (1854–1923): suffragette, physicist, mathematician and inventor’ in Science Museum Group Journal Issue 10 https://dx.doi.org/10.15180/181002
Henderson, F, 2012, ‘Almost a Fellow: Hertha Ayrton and an embarrassing episode in the history of the Royal Society (1902)’, https://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/2012/03/08/almost-a-fellow/
IET Archives, ‘Archives Biographies: Hertha Ayrton’ https://www.theiet.org/resources/library/archives/biographies/ayrtonh.cfm
Jaffé, D, 2003, Ingenious women: from tincture of saffron to flying machines (Stroud: Sutton)
Sharp, E, 1926, Hertha Ayrton: A Memoir (London: Edward Arnold & Co)
MINI BIOGRAPHY
Education
1874 Passed the Cambridge University Examination for Women with Honours in English and Mathematics.
1876-1881 Read mathematics at Girton College helped by a grant she secured with the help of Bodichon. There she founded the college fire brigade formed a mathematics club with Charlotte Scott. She could not be awarded a degree or certificate as Cambridge did not grant degrees to women at this time. In 1881 she took the external BSc degree offered by the University of London and was awarded a BSc.
Some Key Achievements and Interests
Invented the sphygmometer for recording the pulse, the line divider.
Discovered relationships between elements of the experimental assembly and laws governing the behaviour of the arc.
1884 Granted patent for her line-divider.
1895 Wrote articles for The Electrician explaining the hissing phenomena.
1899 Presented and awarded prize for her paper ‘The Hissing of the Electric Arc’ to the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
Invented the Ayrton Fan which was then used in the trenches to clear poisonous gas.
1899 First woman to become a member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) and chaired the Physical Science section of the International Congress of Women.
1900 Spoke at the International Electrical Congress in Paris which led to the British Association for the Advancement of Science allowing women to serve on committees.
1904 Delivered the first scientific paper read by a woman for the Royal Society.
1906 Awarded the Hughes Medal by the Royal Society for her work on electric arcs and ripple marks in sand and water.
1906 Became an active member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WPSU).
1919 Founding member of the International Federation of University Women.
Vice-president of the British Federation of University Women and vice-president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.
1920 Founding member of the National Union of Scientific Workers.
Was granted 26 patents in her lifetime.
Issues
1885 Domestic responsibilities took up much of her energy when she married until 1891 received a legacy from Bodichon which allowed her to employ a housekeeper.
1902 Put forward for election as a Fellow of the Royal Society but not accepted as married women had no legal status due to coverture. ‘We are of the opinion that married women are not eligible as Fellows of the Royal Society. Whether the Charters admit of the election of unmarried women appears to us to be very doubtful.’
Connection to Bloomsbury
Awarded BSc degree from the University of London (external exams) (the first University to give external students the opportunity to continue to earn a living while studying, and to study privately and take exams without coming to London)
Female networks
Ottolie Blind who nicknamed Ayrton ‘Hertha’ after Algernon Swinburne’s poem.
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Charlotte Angas Scott, Edith Zangwill, Eugénie Sellers Strong, Evelyn Sharp, George Eliot, Lady Louisa Goldsmid (who supported Ayrton’s application to Girton College), Marie Curie.
(George Eliot was so inspired by Ayrton that she drew on her in the creation of the character Mirah in her novel of 1876 Daniel Deronda.)
Writing / Publications include
1895 Articles published in The Electrician re her findings re the relationships between elements.
1902 The Electric Arx became standard work on the mechanism of the electric arc.
Contributed to the ‘Mathematical Questions’ section of The Educational Times.
Further reading:
the-life-and-material-culture-of-hertha-ayrton (sciencemuseum.org.uk)