Kathleen Lonsdale

Dame Kathleen Lonsdale ( née Yardley, born January 28, 1903 in Newbridge, Kildare, Ireland, † April 1, 1971 in London) was an Irish Kristallografin which has discovered the planar hexagonal structure of benzene.

Life

Lonsdale was born as Kathleen Yardley in Ireland Newbridge. It was at the Charlotte House, Newbridge, born, where her father was town postmaster. She was the tenth child of Harry Yardley and Jessie Cameron. Her family moved to England when she was five years old.

She went to Ilford County High School for Girls, but moved to the boys 'school to take Mathematics and natural sciences, which were not offered at the girls' school.

She received her Bachelor's degree ( B.Sc.) from Bedford College for Women in 1922 and obtained a Master degree ( M.Sc.) in Physics at University College London in 1924. Thereafter, she joined the research group of Sir William Bragg. In 1927 she married Thomas Jackson Lonsdale. They had three children - Jane, Nancy and Stephen.

Lonsdale 1935 Quakerin. Therefore, she was a practicing pacifist and had during the Second World War, some time in the Holloway prison because she refused to register for civil defense services or pay a tax penalty for non-registration.

Lonsdale received her doctoral degree ( D.Sc. ) at University College London in 1936. She worked on the synthesis of diamonds, when she discovered the structure of benzene. She was a pioneer of X-ray diffraction studies of crystals. Lonsdale was one of the first two female members of the Royal Society of Arts in London in 1945.

In 1949, Lonsdale was a professor of chemistry and director of the Kristallografieabteilung at University College London. She was the first female professor at that college, where she remained until her retirement in 1968.

In 1956, she was ennobled with the title Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She was also the first female president of the International Union of Crystallography (1966 ) and the British Association for the Advancement of Science ( 1967).

In 1971, she died 68 years old.

A particular diamond shape, the lonsdaleite, was named after her and a science building at the University of Limerick and one at University College London. The National University of Ireland, Maynooth has appointed a chemistry prize for her.

Writings

• The Structure of the Benzene Ring in Hexamethylbenzene, Proceedings of the Royal Society 123A: 494 ( 1929).
• An X - Ray Analysis of the Structure of Hexachlorobenzene, Using the Fourier Method, Proceedings of the Royal Society 133A: 536 ( 1931).
• Simplified Structure Factor and Electron Density Formulae for the 230 Space Groups of Mathematical Crystallography, G. Bell & Sons, London, 1936.
• Diamonds, Natural and Artificial, Nature 153: 669 (1944).
• Divergent Beam X -ray Photography of Crystals, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 240A: 219 (1947).
• Crystals and X - Rays, G. Bell & Sons, London, 1948.