A WOMAN SCIENTIST.

Northern Advocate, 17 March 1913, Page 2

A WOMAN SCIENTIST.

Mrs Ayrton, the mother of Mrs Israel Zangwill, is regarded as the foremost woman scientist in Great Britain, according to a writer in the ''''Hebrew Standard." She was the daughter of the late Levi Marks, and received her early education in a private school, where she carried off the chief prizes in each class. In her final year she took her examination for Girton College, Cambridge, then the only woman's college in the Kingdom. In this examination Miss Marks headed the list, and was on that account awarded an entrance scholarship which entitled her to free tuition. At Girton she" proceeded to specialise iii physics and mathematics, and while there invented an instrument for recording the pulse beats—and this after having scarcely reached her seventeenth year. At the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science for 1899, Mrs Ayrton

read a paper to the electrical division, in which for the first time was given to the world the law. connecting current length and pressure in the arc, and also explanations and mathematical deductions which completely solved the mystery of the "hissing" effect. Almost immediately afterward, before the Institute of Electrical Engineers! she read a paper on "Sand Ripples," an important contribution to the navigation of winding rivers. Mrs Ayrton was thereupon unanimously chosen a member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, the first woman ever to have been appointed.