Hertha Ayrton

Have you seen today’s Google doodle? It honors physicist Hertha Marks Ayrton, who was born on this day in Portsea, England, in 1854. She studied mathematics at Girton College, part of the University of Cambridge. She passed her exams in 1881 but, like all female students at Cambridge at the time, did not receive a degree. In 1893, when her husband, electrical engineer William Ayrton, was attending a conference, Hertha made an important discovery concerning the electric arcs he had been studying. Used at the time in lamps, electric arcs consisted of current flowing between two separated conductors, but the arcs often hissed and flickered persistently. Hertha attributed the source of the problem to oxidation of the carbon electrodes. She presented her results to the Institution of Electrical Engineers and became the group’s first female member. Hertha later studied the hydrodynamics of ripples in sand (hence the swirls in the Google doodle). She was the first woman nominated to become a fellow at the Royal Society, but the organization declined to admit a married woman. The Society awarded her the Hughes Medal in 1906.

Date in History: 28 April 1854