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Characters in Rutherford's life

Hertha Ayrton 2.jpg

   

An inventive researcher, Hertha Ayrton had to face the machismo of the scientific world of her time. She befriended Marie Curie, sharing with her Polish origins, knowledge of the french language and similar misadventures in a predominantly male environment.

Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923)

Pictures:

  • Hertha Ayrton.. Source: Shalom Sussex .

  • Barbara Ayrton in 1909. Source: Wikipedia

  • Highcliffe, house in Dorset where Marie Curie and Hertha Ayrton stayed in 1912. Source: Ellen McGinnis

Barbara Ayrton-Gould - May 1909.jpg

On June 19, 1903, Pierre and Marie Curie were in London : Pierre had been invited to give a lecture at the Royal Institution, to present their work on radium. Marie, being a woman, had not been able to express herself: she had just had the right to sit in the front row, next to Lord Kelvin . What an honor!

It was during this evening that Marie Curie met Hertha Ayrton.  

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Born Phoebe Sarah Marks, this English engineer had taken as usual the name of her husband, William Edward Ayrton, whom she had married in 1885. 

Her first name, on the other hand, she had chosen: Hertha was the heroine of a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne, a critic of religion. Still a teenager, Phoebe Sarah Marks, whose father was Jewish and whose mother was Christian, had chosen to be agnostic and had therefore found a clear way to display it by calling herself the name of this fictional character whose ideas she shared.  

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Hertha and William had a daughter, born in 1886, named Barbara , in honor of Barbara Bodichon (1827-1891), an important feminist and women's rights activist. 

Barbara Ayrton also became a figure of feminism and was elected MP in 1945, almost 40 years after the beginning of her political involvement in the Women's Social and Political Union (for more information on this association, see the page devoted to Margaret Ashton, a member of another association fighting for women's suffrage).

Hertha Ayrton gained increasing fame for the quality of her inventions. It is also important to emphasize that her husband, himself an engineer, had told her that he should not work with her, otherwise the public and colleagues, seeing their two names in scientific papers, would conclude that he had done everything and she had only been his assistant him. This state of mind was quite similar to that of Pierre Curie, who also fought until his death to have the merits of his wife recognized. Moreover, the two women, having found many points in common when they met in June 1903, apart from the fact that they were supported by their husbands, both experienced widowhood in the following years: 1906 for Marie and 1908 for Hertha.

It probably brought them even closer. Their friendship was so strong that in 1912 Marie Curie, recovering from harassment by the far-right press over her relationship with Paul Langevin , found refuge in the English cottage where Hertha spent the summer (and where she was joined by her daughter Barbara, who was released from prison following a conviction for her feminist activities).

Irène and Eve Curie came to complete the small group.

 

Marie stayed again with Hertha, at her London home in Paddington, in 1913, before traveling to the British Association meeting in Birmingham .

Highcliffe - house were Marie Curie and Hertha Ayrton Stayed in 1912.jpg

During the Great War, Hertha Ayrton again distinguished herself by developing fans that could be used for evacuating poison gas from the trenches.  

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Born 23 years before Marie Curie, she passed away 11 years before her. 

A revealing episode of the macho spirit of the time concerns the rejection of Hertha Ayrton's nomination as a Fellow of the Royal Society , in 1902.  

I included this story in the first volume of my biography of Ernest Rutherford and present here the extract corresponding to this event (as the book is only available in French, the following excerpt is a quick translation) :

      Hertha Ayrton was known for the variety of her scientific work and her commitment to the defence of women - in particular their access to the right to vote. Nominated for election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1902 in recognition of her research on electricity, she was passed over as a nobody - a phrase that took on its full meaning on this occasion.

     The form submitting Ayrton's name had been signed by such prominent figures as Sir Norman Lockyer, the astronomer, the mathematicians John Perry and Olaus Henrici, the chemists William Tilden and Raphael Meldola, and the physicist Joseph Everett, who was a staunch opponent of Rutherford's ideas on radioactivity, but who was more progressive when it came to the right of women to compete for the same positions as men. But it did not help: this very first female candidate to the Royal Society had come up against an insurmountable wall: a point of law of stainless logic, unearthed after long investigations by the academy's lawyers.

    It was true, the lawyers argued, that the Royal Society's charter did not explicitly exclude the possibility of accepting female members; but British law, which prevailed over any other document, necessarily led to the same result. Indeed, according to the official texts, a woman lost all status as soon as she got married. In other words, she could no longer be considered a person. As a result, a learned society governed by a royal charter - and therefore subject to strict compliance with regulations - found itself unable to accept this woman into its ranks... since she did not exist, legally speaking. The question of spinsters was not raised - to the great relief of the guardians of the temple.

Sources :

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