Characters in Rutherford's Life
Harriet Brooks (1876-1933)
As I started writing my biography of Ernest Rutherford, I had two main themes in mind. First of all, the capacity of certain people to move forward, courageously, with perseverance, like this farmer's son from New Zealand who became "the father of nuclear physics". Then, its ability to pass on to younger people, valuing them, stimulating them, creating an atmosphere that encourages the desire to learn, understand and seek. This was obviously the case with Harriet Brooks, a Canadian student, then a graduate physicist, "the greatest after Marie Curie", according to Rutherford.
Thus a third theme emerged: the place of women in science. Harriet Brooks, Marie Curie, Ellen Gleditsch, Fanny Gates, Hertha Ayrton, Margaret White and others appeared in my novel.
Pictures:
Harriet Brooks in 1898
Harriet Brooks biography cover
Harriet Brooks in 1921 with her husband and three children. Source: Super Women in Science ., Page 31, K. Di Domenico.
Sadly, despite Rutherford's best efforts, Harriet Brooks' name has faded from memory over the decades as she spearheaded major discoveries in nuclear physics. Fortunately, in the early 1990s, Marelene and Geoffrey Rayner-Canham pulled her out of the shadows with a detailed biography that chronicles her exciting, eventful and tragic life.
For information, on the cover of this book, Ernest Rutherford appears on the far right, with a bowler hat. The photo was taken in Montreal , in front of the Macdonald Physics Building , in 1899.
After Montreal, Harriet worked in Pennsylvania, at Bryn Mawr College (1901-1902), then in Cambridge, England, in the team of JJ Thomson (1902-1903). She returned to Montreal, but soon went back to the United States, to New York, to teach at Barnard College, an institution affiliated with Columbia University.
There, she suffered serious professional setbacks, for the simple reason that she considered getting married. Unthinkable! A woman could not carry out a professional activity and the responsibilities of a wife and mother at the same time... unless she did both wrong.
She received some support, tried to defend herself, and even wrote a long letter to the principal of her college. In this letter, a sentence seems to me to be emblematic both of her combative state of mind (she who had always been very reserved and insecure) and of the obstacles that stood before her (and many women):
"I also think that it is a duty vis-à-vis my profession and my sex to show that a woman has the right to practice her profession and cannot be condemned to abandon it simply because she is married. I cannot conceive that women's universities, inviting and encouraging women to exercise a profession, can believe themselves, in all fairness, to deny such a principle. "
It didn't change anything. And Harriet Brooks ends up ditching everything: and her job and her suitor.
She then embarked, at the end of the summer of 1906, with a group of friends she had recently met, namely Maxim Gorky, his companion, Maria Fiodorovna Andreeva, and a pianist and revolutionary named Nicolaï Burenine.
Their first settled in a community village in the Adirondacks (between New York and the Canadian border), then in Italy (on the iseland of Capri more precisely). When Burenin decided to return to Russia at the end of 1906, Brooks left Gorky and Andreeva. However, she remained in Europe and resumed research in the laboratory of Marie Curie in Paris (thanks to the help of Gorky and Andreeva, the first being an acquaintance of Marie Curie and the second knowing French).
Once back to her true love, science and its mysteries, Harriet should have stayed on the same side of the Atlantic. But the events that followed somewhat disturbed the plans she was making (or rather the plans that Ernest Rutherford had suggested to her). To find out more, take a look at the page dedicated to London and especially the Bayswater district.
However, the following photograph, taken in 1921, gives a fairly clear idea of the turn of its existence.
Sources :
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Harriet Brooks: Pioneer Nuclear Scientist, Marelene & Geoffrey Rayner-Canham
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Super women in science, Kelly Di Domenico, 2002, page 25 and following.
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Find a Grave, Harriet Brooks Pitcher
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To learn more : Harriet Brooks sur Wikipédia
Barbara (11 years old) / Frank Pitcher & Harriet Brooks / Charles (9 years old)
Front row: Paul (8 years old)
Photo taken around 1921, taken from Super women in science , Kelly Di Domenico, 2002, page 31 .
More information on the Find a Grave website :
Barbara Ann Pitcher ( 1910–1929)
Charles Roger Pitcher ( 1912–1921)
Paul Brooks Pitcher ( 1913–1998)