|
Hertha Marks Ayrton Fellowship
This award was inaugurated in 2009 to mark the 25th
anniversary of the founding of the Panasonic Trust. Its purpose is to
promote the further education of under-represented groups in the engineering
profession by supporting a suitably qualified engineer to study a full-time
Masters’ degree course specifically related to sustainable development or
some other environmental technology.
The prestigious fellowship is awarded as part of the
Trust’s annual Fellowship programme. Prospective applicants must therefore submit an application through this
scheme to be considered for this award.
Hertha Marks Ayrton (1854 –
1923)
Born Phoebe Sarah Marks, Hertha attended Girton
College, Cambridge where she passed the Mathematics Tripos in 1880. At that
time Cambridge only awarded certificates and not degrees to women and so she
completed an external examination and received her degree from the
University of London in 1881.
In 1884 Hertha patented a line-divider, an engineering
drawing instrument for dividing a line into any number of equal parts and
for enlarging and reducing figures. She married William Ayrton in 1885 and
went on to work with him on experiments in physics and electricity
eventually becoming an acknowledged expert on the subject of the electric
arc.
Hertha established a number of firsts for women in the
engineering profession: she was the first to be elected a member of the
Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1899. In the same year she was
awarded a prize of £10 by the Institution for a paper on the hissing arc and
allowed to read it at one of their meetings. In 1902 she was the first woman
to be nominated as a Fellow of the Royal Society, although this was
eventually blocked as she was married. However in 1904 Hertha became the
first woman to read her own paper before the Royal Society and in 1906
received the Hughes Medal for experimental investigations into the electric
arc and sand ripples.
Hertha’s personal and social values were greatly
affected by personal experiences of poverty whilst growing up and
discrimination as a woman. This led to her involvement with the Suffragette
movement in the early 20th century. On her death in 1923 she left a legacy
to the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the one organisation who had
welcomed her without prejudice.
|
