Sarah Frances Whiting

Born on 23 August 1846 in Wyoming, New York, Sarah Frances Whiting was a pioneering physics educator who developed the first lab courses for women students. She earned her bachelor’s degree at age 17 from Ingham University, one of the first women’s colleges in the US. She became a teacher in Brooklyn until 1876, when she was hired as a physics professor at a new university for women, Wellesley College in Massachusetts. For her first few years at Wellesley she also sat in on physics lab classes at MIT. Whiting used that knowledge to organize the first physics lab classes for women students, and only the second for undergraduates in the US. Whiting kept up on the latest physics developments, attending lectures and spending sabbaticals visiting Lord Kelvin, J.J. Thomson, and other leading scientists of the day. She was probably the first to take x-ray photographs in the US. In 1898 a 12-inch telescope that Whiting had used during her years in Brooklyn went up for sale; she convinced a Wellesley trustee to buy it and build the Whitin Observatory. Whiting’s students included Annie Jump Cannon , who went on to become a pioneer in classifying stars. Whiting died in 1927 at age 81. “Her sister Elizabeth was her sole survivor and legal heir,” writes physicist Frieda A. Stahl in a 2005 short biography of Whiting. “American women physicists are her professional heirs.” (Photo credit: Wellesley College)

Date in History: 23 August 1846