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| Kathleen Lonsdale, 11" x 14" linocut print on Japanese kozo by Ele Willoughby, 2023 |
I chose Kathleen Lonsdale DBE FRS (née Yardley, 1903-1971) for the #printerSolstice prompt shape because she solved a longstanding chemistry conundrum of the shape of benzene & her drawing of electron density for hexachlorobenzene (green) & model of hexamethylbenzene explore shape in different forms.
Going to Holloway prison was the single most formative experience for Kathleen Lonsdale’s scientific career and it gave her the ability to speak to anyone. Her husband said, “Before prison it might have bothered her to go to Buckingham Palace. Afterwards, Holloway or Buckingham Palace were all the same.” Born the tenth child of a poor family in Ireland, with four brothers who died in infancy, pacifist, prison reformer and physicist Dame Kathleen Lonsdale DBE FRS (née Yardley, 1903-1971) served time, as she was unwilling to compromise her beliefs. She was also a trail blazing crystallographer who solved a conundrum which had plagued chemists for decades: the shape of the benzene ring, proving it was flat using x-ray diffraction on hexamethylbenzene in 1929. She was the first to employ Fourier spectral methods and used them to solve the structure of hexachlorobenzene in 1931. In 1945 she was one of the first two women elected Fellow of the Royal Society and was the first woman in several roles including: tenured professor at University College London, president of the International Union of Crystallography and president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Her father, a soldier and then a postmaster Harry Yardley and her mother, a strict fundamentalist Baptist of Scottish descent Jessie Cameron did not have a happy marriage. Between the unrest in Ireland and her father’s alcoholism, her mother decided to divorce and move the children to Seven Kinds, Essex, England when Kathleen was five. She won a scholarship to the Ilford County High School for Girls but had to go to the boys’ school in her final two years as the girls’ school did not offer mathematics and science. During WWI her home was on the Zeppelin route; she did homework by candlelight during air raids and first developed her opposition to war. Anxious to get to university as soon as possible she went to the Bedford College for Women in London on a county scholarship. After her first year she won a university scholarship and switched from mathematics to physics, against all advice (especially that of her old headmistress who told her she would never distinguish herself in physics). She graduated in physics with the highest score ever for a London University, with a BSc in 1922, which brought her to the attention of physics Nobel laureate William Henry Bragg, one of her examiners.
Bragg offered her a spot on his team at University College (and then the Royal Institution), and a grant of a £180 a year! She lived at home and contributed to family expenses, gaining her MSc from University College London in 1924. She worked with Bragg until she married in 1927 and followed her husband, research chemist Thomas Lonsdale to Leeds, where he had been offered a job at the Silk Research Association. Shortly after her marriage, she applied for an 1851 Exhibition Fellowship which Bragg expected she would win, as several of his other (all male) students had done. Not only did they turn her down for the award, they wrote they “would be breaking the spirit of the regulations in awarding an exhibition to a married woman.” Luckily Bedford College offered her a research grant and she continued to correspond with Bragg. She worked part-time as a physics demonstrator and doing lab work in Leeds. It was here that she was given crystals of hexamethylbenzene, the first important structure she solved. Debate had been raging between organic chemists and crystallographers whether benzene was flat or had a zigzag shape like cyclohexane, but benzene itself was a challenge to crystallize. Lonsdale had the insight that she could instead look at the benzene within hexamethylbenzene and in the process of solving its form, she proved that the benzene ring (which it contained) was flat. She followed this with solving the structure of hexachlorbenzene; this was important as she was the first to investigate an organic compound with Fourier analysis. She had cleverly found a project she could do with calculations rather than lab work while she focused on starting their family. She also developed popular crystallographic reference tables with W.T. Astbury. She considered giving up science, but Thomas supported her research told her he “had not married to get a free housekeeper.” He encouraged her to continue in research. When they had their first daughter in 1929, Bragg convinced the Royal Institution to grant her £50 to employ some childcare so she could work on calculations. Then they moved back to London for Thomas’ new job, and had a second daughter in 1931. Bragg, anxious to have her back, was able to find a further £200 to assist her at home so she could return to work in 1931. They had their son in 1934. She earned her doctorate from the University of London in 1936 while working at the Royal Institution, where she stayed for 15 years. She worked with Bragg until his death in 1942, then with Sir Henry Dale, as a Dewar Fellow from 1944 through 1946.
She was raised a Baptist, but in 1935, she and her husband, both committed pacifists, became Quakers. She became a Sponsor of the UK Peace Pledge Union, which meant she signed the pledge "War is a crime against humanity. I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war. I am also determined to work for the removal of all causes of war.” They turned the top floor of their house into a flat where they welcomed refugees from Germany. When she was required to register for civil defence duties during WWII she refused to do so and refused to pay the small fine for not registering. She believed there should be an exemption for conscientious objection. She was sentenced to serve a month in Holloway prison, where the grim conditions lead to a life-long commitment to prison reform. While she was imprisoned, she found the clothing unclean, medical exam sketchy and she collapsed under her workload, scrubbing and cleaning; only then did they lighten her workload. Sir Henry Dale requested that she be given access to papers and instruments and she was allowed to work in her cell in the evenings. Her colleagues worried she would be bored; she was in fact absorbed, talking to fellow prisoners about their lives and crimes. Her second fine for refusing to register for civil defence was paid anonymously, much to her chagrin; she would have rather stood on her principles and serve another prison term. She contributed to a pamphlet on Prison for Women about her experiences in Holloway and the need for prison reform.
In 1945 Lonsdale and Marjory Stephenson were the first women elected Fellows of the Royal Society. Then she finally got a permanent position. In 1946 she was appointed Reader in Crystallography and then Professor of Chemistry and Head of the Department of Crystallography at the University College London in 1949, finally beginning to teach and run her own research group, mentoring future crystallographers. She was their first tenured female professor. She researched the use of x-ray imaging at different temperatures and the structure and texture of crystals. She worked on the synthesis of diamonds. She won the Royal Society’s Davy Medal for significant discoveries in chemistry in 1957. Later she worked on solid state reactions, pharmacology and structure of methonium compounds and stones and minerals produced by the human body like kidney stones. She became an emeritus professor after 1968. Nobel laureate Dorothy Hodgkin wrote, "There is a sense in which she appeared to own the whole of crystallography in her time.
In 1953 she delivered the keynote Swathmore Lecture at the Yearly Meeting of British Quakers, “Removing the Causes of War”. She wrote about peaceful dialogue was appointed the first secretary of Churches' Council of Healing by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
When Thomas retired at 60, they moved to Brexill-on-Sea; this meant 5 hours a day commute for Kathleen, but she felt it worthwhile though she was tired. Thomas helped with her tremendous amount of correspondence about peace and prison reform, and would bring her dinner in bed as soon as she got home. She was someone who never stopped working, even when she became ill and was hospitalized. She died in hospital 1971 from anaplastic cancer, at age 68, the day after Thomas' 70th birthday.
References
Kathleen Lonsdale, Wikipedia, accessed February, 2023
Hodgkin, Dorothy M.C., Kathleen Lonsdale, 28 January 1903 - 1 April 1971, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Volume 21, Issue 21, November 1975
Melinda Baldwin, The Royal Society’s first woman physicist, Physics Today, 25 January, 2018. DOI: 10.1063/PT.6.4.20180125a
One crystal model of hexamethyl benzene, Science Museum Group, Object Number: 1993-421/4/11, Gift of University College London, in memory of Dame Kathleen Lonsdale
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