Hertha Ayrton

Hertha Ayrton (1854 to 1923), born Phoebe Sarah Marks in Portsmouth, was a pioneering English physicist, electrical engineer, mathematician and inventor, as well as a suffragist. Brought up in a Jewish family, she studied mathematics at Girton College, Cambridge, where she passed the Mathematical Tripos in 1880, and she later became the first woman member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers. The Royal Society awarded her the Hughes Medal for her work on electric arcs and on ripple marks in sand and water. During the First World War she invented an anti-gas fan to protect against poisonous gases. Throughout her life she supported women's enterprise, including Emmeline Pankhurst and Marie Curie, and she contributed actively to several British women's rights organisations.