Posted
on January 28, 2016
Diamonds
are a dame's best friends?
Dame
Kathleen Lonsdale was an accomplished scientist, researcher,
professor. She accomplished a lot of “firsts” for women in
science. (“Dame” is an honorary title for women equivalent to
“Sir” for men. Lonsdale was given the title Dame Commander of the
Order of the British Empire in 1956 for her scientific work.)
One
of her Lonsdale's students – a woman who went on to become a
science professor herself – acknowledged that she learned a lot of
science from Professor Lonsdale, but she ALSO said that she learned a
lot about how to balance a career and a family from Lonsdale. And
that is a really important thing!
Lonsdale
was born on this date in 1903 in Ireland, but she moved to England
when she was just five years old. At the time that she was attending
high school, mathematics and science were not offered in the High
School for Girls, so she ended up transferring to a High School for
Boys for those subjects! She went on to earn Bachelor of Science and
Master of Science degrees at university. Eventually she became the
first woman to be a tenured professor at the University College
London.
I'm
sure you're dying to know what that diamond crack at the top of this
article was all about? Well, Lonsdale's specialty was
crystallography, the study of atomic and molecular structure. One of
the things she worked on was the synthesis of diamonds. (That is,
making diamonds, rather than digging up diamonds that were made
naturally.)
Lonsdale also determined the structure of benzene rings, which are important
organic compounds, and of hexachlorobenzene. She was a pioneer in the
use of X-rays to study crystals. Remember, crystals are found
everywhere in nature, from snowflakes to gemstones, from salts to
organic compounds to minerals. Here are some cool pictures from
modern crystallography:
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