Hilda Hartle

Last updated
Hilda Jane Hartle
Born11 September 1876
Birmingham
Died20 May 1974
NationalityBritish
CitizenshipBritish
Known forResearcher and teacher of chemistry. One of nineteen signatories to the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society for women chemists to afforded Fellowship status.
Scientific career
InstitutionsNewnham College, Cambridge.

Homerton College, Cambridge

Brighton Municipal Training College for Girls

Hilda Jane Hartle (11 September 1876- 20 May 1974) was a British chemist researcher and teacher. She was prominent in promoting the teaching of Chemistry to women and became known for her opposition to domestic science. [1]

Contents

Biography

Hartle was born in Birmingham and later moved to Newnham, Cambridge in 1897 to pursue university studies. [2] She became a researcher with Percy Frankland at the University of Birmingham from 1901 to 1903. [3]

From 1903 to 1920 she was a Lecturer in Chemistry at Homerton College, Cambridge and then became principal at Brighton Municipal Training College for Teachers, Brighton (1920-1941).

After retirement, she went on to work for women's organisations. [2]

The 1904 petition

In 1904, Hartle, along with eighteen other British women chemists, signed a petition setting out their reasons to the Chemical Society why they should be afforded Fellowship status like their male counterparts. The petition eventually led to the admission of women as Fellows of the Society [4] (one of the Societies that amalgamated to become the Royal Society of Chemistry), as well as identifying prominent female chemists working in Britain at this time. [5]

Related Research Articles

William Hobson Mills British organic chemist

William Hobson Mills FRS was a British organic chemist.

Dorothy Jordan Lloyd British biochemist

Dorothy Jordan Lloyd was an early protein scientist who studied the interactions of water with proteins, particularly gelatin. She was also Director of the British Leather Manufacturers' Research Association. She was the first to propose that the structure of globular proteins was maintained by hydrogen bonds, an idea championed later by Linus Pauling and others.

Ida Freund Austrian-British chemist

Ida Freund was the first woman to be a university chemistry lecturer in the United Kingdom. She is known for her influence on science teaching, particularly the teaching of women and girls. She wrote two key chemistry textbooks and invented the idea of baking periodic table cupcakes, as well as inventing a gas measuring tube which was named after her.

Grace Frankland English microbiologist (1858–1946)

Grace Coleridge Frankland known as Mrs Percy Franklandnée Grace Toynbee was an English microbiologist. She was one of the nineteen female scientists who wrote the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society to request that they should create some female fellows of the society.

Edith Humphrey British chemist

Edith Ellen Humphrey was a British inorganic chemist who carried out pioneering work in co-ordination chemistry at the University of Zurich under Alfred Werner. She is thought to be the first British woman to obtain a doctorate in chemistry.

May Sybil Leslie

May Sybil Leslie was an English chemist who worked with Marie Curie and Ernest Rutherford. From 1920 until her death Leslie was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Millicent Taylor was a British educator and chemist who worked in the fields of organic chemistry and physical chemistry.

Kathleen Culhane Lathbury was a British biochemist known for her work with insulin and vitamins. Lathbury worked as an overseer at British Drug Houses where she was responsible for supervising the manufacture of insulin to make sure it was effective. After her retirement she took up painting and was exhibited in the Royal Academy. She was still driving at the age of 90. She had three sisters, Norah, Rosalind, Christine and two brothers, Robert, and Michael who all had equally remarkable lives

Rose Stern was a teacher from Birmingham, England. She was science mistress at North London Collegiate School for Ladies. While a student at Mason College, she was the first woman student to become a member of the Institute of Chemistry of Great Britain & Ireland. A proponent of grounding chemistry instruction in domestic science, she published A method of teaching chemistry in schools and A short history of chemistry (1924).

Mildred May Gostling, also published under her married name Mildred Mills, was an English chemist who completed research in carbohydrate chemistry. She was one of the nineteen signatories on a letter from professional female chemists to the Chemical Society requesting that women be accepted as Fellows to the Society.

Mary Beatrice Thomas was a lecturer in chemistry at Royal Holloway College and later at Girton College, Cambridge where she was also Director of Studies. She was a noted educator, co-editing a chemistry textbook written by Ida Freund, as well as being one of the nineteen signatories to a petition to the Chemical Society arguing for admission of women as Fellows of the Society.

Katharine Isabella Williams was a British woman chemist who became a student, aged 29, at University College Bristol. She was known for her collaboration in the 1880s with Nobel prize winning Scottish chemist, William Ramsay and was also one of the signatories of the 1904 petition for the admission of women to the Chemical Society.

Dorothy Blanche Louisa Marshall was a British chemist who worked at Girton, Avery Hill and the National Physical Laboratory. In 1904, she signed a petition for women to be admitted as a Fellow of the Chemical Society.

The 1904 petitionto the Chemical Society was a petition written by 19 female chemists setting out the reasons why they should be afforded the status of Fellow of the Chemical Society. The petition is of importance as it eventually led to the admission of women as Fellows of the Society, as well as identifying prominent female chemists working in Britain at this time.

Emily Comber Fortey was a British chemist and politician. She gained her B.Sc. in 1886 before working with Vladimir Markovnikov and Sydney young on fractional distillation. In 1904, she was one of nineteen signatories on a petition to allow the admission of women to the Chemical Society.

Clare de Brereton Evans was a scientist and academic who became the first woman to be awarded a doctorate in Chemistry (DSc). She was a pioneer translator of Meister Eckhart's German works.

Elizabeth Eleanor Field British chemist

Elizabeth Eleanor Field was a British chemist and the Head of Chemistry at Royal Holloway College for over nineteen years. She is also noted as one of the nineteen signatories of the 1904 petition which aimed to grant women the status of Fellows of the Chemical Society.

Katherine Alice Burke was a British chemist and one of the nineteen signatories of the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society.

Alice Emily Smith was a British chemist and one of the nineteen signatories of the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society.

Annie Homer was a biochemist at Newnham College, Cambridge, University of Toronto and the Lister Institute. She developed improved methods for large-scale production of antitoxin sera during World War I.

References

  1. "THE RISE AND FALL OF DOMESTIC CHEMISTRY IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN ENGLAND DURING THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY" (PDF). School of Chemical Sciences, University of Illinois. 2011. Retrieved 10 October 2017.
  2. 1 2 Rayner-Canham, Marelene (2008). Chemistry was their Life: Pioneering British Women Chemists, 1880-1949. Imperial College Press. ISBN   9781860949869.
  3. Rayner-Canham, Geoff (2003). "Pounding on the Doors: The Fight for Acceptance of British Women Chemists" (PDF). Bull. Hist. Chem. 28 (2): 110–119.
  4. Mason, Joan (1991). "A forty years' war". Chemistry in Britain: 233–238.
  5. Creese, Mary R. S. (5 January 2009). "British women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who contributed to research in the chemical sciences". The British Journal for the History of Science. 24 (3): 275–305. doi: 10.1017/S0007087400027370 . PMID   11622943.