Women Scientists

Kathleen Lonsdale 1903-1971

At a glance:

crystallographer, first woman to be made a Fellow of the Royal Society

Irish by birth, Lonsdale's family moved to England when she was 5. She had to move to a boy's school to study maths and science and entered Bedford College for Women to study maths when only 16. At University College London, she became a pioneer in the use of X rays to study crystals. she married fellow chemist Thomas Lonsdale and moved to Leeds when he got a job there. She had 3 children and was ready to give up research but her husband said that he hadn't married her to get a free housekeeper. Whilst at Leeds, Lonsdale showed that the benzene ring, essential in the study of organic chemistry, was flat. The Lonsdales were Quakers and during the Second World War, she refused to register for civil defence duties. She was summoned, refused to pay a fine and subsequently imprisoned in Holloway gaol for a month. In 1945, she and Marjory Stephenson, became the first women to be elected Fellows of the Royal Society.
Kathleen Lonsdale

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