- Hertha Marks Ayrton
(Phoebe Sarah) Hertha Ayrton, née Marks (
28 April 1854 inPortsea -23 August 1923 ) was an English engineer, mathematician and inventor.She attended
Girton College, Cambridge where she studiedmathematics , and passed theMathematical Tripos in 1880. At that time Cambridge gave only certificates and not degrees to women. She therefore successfully completed an external examination and received a B.Sc. degree from theUniversity of London .Ayrton invented a draftsman's device that could be used for dividing up a line into equal parts as well as for enlarging and reducing figures. She was also active in devising and solving mathematical problems, many of which were published in the Mathematical Questions and Their Solutions from the "
Educational Times ".She assisted her husband,
William Edward Ayrton , with his experiments inphysics andelectricity . In 1899, she was elected the first female member of theInstitution of Electrical Engineers . She was the first woman ever to read her own paper before theRoyal Society of London .Her daughter
Barbara Bodichon Ayrton (1888-1950), named after feministBarbara Bodichon , was asuffragette .Further reading
* Reminiscences of Hertha Aryton by A. P. Trotter in [http://cwp.library.ucla.edu/articles/ayrton/ayrtonrem1.html CWP at UCLA]
** Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography
* Joan Mason (2006) "Hertha Aryton" in [http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521821971 "OUT OF THE SHADOWS: Contributions of 20th Century Women to Physics"] Nina Byers and Gary Williams, ed., Cambridge University Press.External links
* [http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/ayrton.htm "Hertha Marks Ayrton", Biographies of Women Mathematicians] ,
Agnes Scott College
* Hertha Marks Aryton in [http://cwp.library.ucla.edu/Phase2/Ayrton,_Hertha_Marks@841234567.html CWP at UCLA]
* [http://cwp.library.ucla.edu/articles/ayrton/ayrtonbio.html Biography of Ayrton by Marjorie Mailey]
* [http://www.womeninscience.co.uk/bios.html Women in Science]Persondata
NAME= Ayrton, Hertha Marks
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DATE OF BIRTH=1854
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DATE OF DEATH=1923
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