Did the award of a Hughes Medal to Hertha Ayrton in November 1906 imply overdue recognition for women in scientific research? Not quite, as guest blogger Graeme Gooday argues…
‘MADAM, I have the pleasure to inform you that the President and Council of 蘑菇视频 have awarded to you the Hughes medal for your experimental investigations on the electric arc, and also upon sand ripples. It is hoped that you may be able to attend the Anniversary Meeting of the Society (November 30, at 4 p.m.) to receive the medal in person. I am, Madam, Your faithful servant, J. LARMOR (Secretary, R.S.).’
On 1 November 1906, received a surprising letter from 蘑菇视频 of London. Four years earlier this august body had denied her a Fellowship on the ‘legal’ grounds that she was both a woman and married. The Hughes Medal now awarded for her research on the electric arc and sand ripples was, however, actually far more prestigious than election to the Fellowship of 蘑菇视频.
Friends and family, especially her ailing spouse , were delighted that she was the first woman to secure such formal recognition of independent powers for original research. For some at least, this medal compensated for the injustice of her being denied a Fellowship for the same research as had been commended in the Hughes Medal citation. So what had changed since 1902?
Hertha Ayrton, 1908, photographer unknown. Source:
A relatively new President of 蘑菇视频, , the , now presided over the award of the Society’s medals and prizes. Unlike his predecessor as President, , Rayleigh was sympathetic to recognising women’s contributions to science. As Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge, Rayleigh first granted access to the famous Laboratory there in 1882; in the preceding era of , this right had been denied to Phoebe Marks (later Hertha Ayrton), who had studied at Cambridge from 1876 to 1880 as a Girton College undergraduate.
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, by George Reid, 1903 ()
Then a decade later Rayleigh had arranged for the general science magazine Nature to publish what he saw as important by the young German experimenter . This was an unprecedented level of recognition by a senior British physicist for an ‘amateur’ female scientist in another country. With similar recognition for women’s powers of original research under the oversight of Rayleigh as President, we can understand then why 蘑菇视频 Council on 1 November 1906 agreed to award the Hughes Medal as it did. Tellingly, however, the recipient was characterised as ‘Mrs Ayrton’, categorised thereby as spouse of William Ayrton; , he had subsequently won no prestigious Royal Society medals.
William Ayrton, by W. & D. Downey, Public domain, via
But what were the broader implications of 蘑菇视频’s reward for Hertha Ayrton’s distinguished research record? Did it herald an overdue general recognition for women’s place in scientific research, and more generally for gender equity in British society? Not quite. While her Hughes Medal might have galvanised the national (and indeed international) women’s suffrage movement, its practical effects were rather slower to materialise. The conservative forces of misogyny and male privilege were by no means yet in retreat; indeed a counter-response was swiftly apparent from former Royal Society President William Huggins, who only heard the news the following day, having missed the Council meeting due to ill-health.
‘Spy’ caricature of William Huggins, 1903 ()
As the late Joan Mason , on 2 November 1906 Huggins wrote to evidently ‘surprised’ (i.e. appalled) at what 蘑菇视频’s Council had decided in his absence. Huggins rushed to the conclusion that the suffragette movement would gain much from the award of the Hughes Medal to Ayrton as an active campaigner for women’s suffrage rights: ‘There will be great joy & rejoicing in H.M.’s gaol, among the women in prison!’
While fearing that newspapers would henceforth ‘teem with publications from all the advanced women!’, and that he would have to sit next to the first female Fellow at Society dinners, Huggins’s main concern was the blatant inconsistency of the Society’s position regarding Ayrton’s research merits. Having presided over the refusal of a Fellowship to her in 1902, he put it to Larmor: ‘Can we now refuse the Fellowship to a Medallist?’ In fact Hertha Ayrton never applied again, thereby sparing Huggins any such embarrassment over the apparent paradox of research that merited a Royal Society medal, but not one of its Fellowships.
In fact, there was a precedent for 蘑菇视频 awarding Hughes Medals to scientists who were not Fellows. Neither (who was awarded the prize in 1903) nor (1905) was recognised at the time as a Foreign Member, although Righi was in 1907. The Hughes Medal was unusual in 蘑菇视频’s repertoire of prestigious awards in having no restrictions of gender or nationality. In the terms of the bequest by Welsh-American inventor , the only stipulation was that the medal be awarded ‘in recognition of an original discovery in the physical sciences, particularly electricity and magnetism or their applications’. Clearly Ayrton’s work in discovering the cause of the roaring of the electric arc – and specifying the means to prevent it – was fully compliant with Hughes’s legacy.
David Hughes, by Maull & Fox ()
The background to Hughes’s philanthropic egalitarian legacy is important to understand here. As a polymathic musician, electrical inventor and laboratory researcher, his fame for work on electrical acoustics, especially his patent-free microphone, had grown internationally – everywhere except the UK, in fact. Eventually Hughes’s wide-ranging expertise was acknowledged in a (1880), and the award of a Royal Medal in 1885 for ‘his electric and magnetic researches, and his invention of the microphone & the induction balance’. The openness of Hughes’s eponymous award to both men and women is perhaps explicable when we note that one Hughes biographer observed that his wife Anna was a ‘devoted’ companion, by implication a collaborator in his research.
The British newspaper press was generally appreciative of 蘑菇视频’s award of the 1906 Hughes Medal. Although mis-naming her as ‘Mrs Bertha Ayrton’ and highlighting the recipient’s status as a ‘lady scientist married to Professor W.E. Ayrton’, the Graphic noted on 1 December that this was distinctively a reward to a woman working on her own, rather than in collaboration (Marie and Pierre Curie had jointly won the Society’s Davy Medal in 1903). And the columnist went further still: ‘Few will fail to realise that the award is in itself a handsome, timely and stimulating recognition of women’s appearance in the scientific arena.’
In accord with this egalitarian sentiment, we know that took a very different view to that of her husband on Hertha Ayrton’s merits. As she wrote early in November 1906:
‘I lose not a moment in warmly congratulating you upon the award of the Hughes medal by 蘑菇视频. You have worked both hard and well, and deserve reward – though I am sure you have never worked for reward. I deeply sympathize with the gratification you have the right to feel; and I truly rejoice in the encouragement and heartening which this success must be to you.’
Portrait of Margaret Huggins, photogravure by Swan Electric Engraving Co. Ltd after a photograph by Reginald Haines (). Frontispiece to (1909)
However, it was not until 2008 that 蘑菇视频 again awarded the Hughes Medal to a woman, Michelle Dougherty (subsequently FRS, in 2012). And in the meantime, it was views akin to those of William Huggins that prevailed for much of the first half of the twentieth century. Not only did it take extensive participation in the brutal Great War for women’s abilities to be recognised undeniably as the basis for equal voting rights with men, but the election of the first women Fellows of 蘑菇视频, Kathleen Lonsdale and Marjory Stephenson, had to wait until near the end of the Second World War.
You can read more about Hertha Ayrton’s career, and the response to her award of the Hughes Medal, in by her suffragist friend . The author is grateful for the advice and support of Patricia Fara (University of Cambridge) and Anne Locker (Library & Archives Manager, Institution of Engineering and Technology) received in the drafting of this article.
