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Harriet Brooks
Canada: 1876 - 1933
First Graduate Student of Ernest RutherfordPerformed the Pioneering Experiments that Led to the Discovery of Nuclear Transmutation
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| Born in
Exeter, Ontario, Harriet Brooks obtained her degree from McGill
University at a time when many people still believed that women should
not be permitted at a university. She was an excellent student,
obtained first-rank honors, and was elected class president.
After graduation, Brooks was invited to join the research team of Ernest Rutherford. a physicist who was extremely supportive of women in science. Rutherford put her to work in the field of electricity and magnetism. This work led to her earning a master's degree in physics - the first given to a woman at McGill University. In 1899, Brooks began her research in radioactivity. Rutherford had reported that thorium gave out some radioactive substance that could be carried away by air currents. He called it an "emanation" and so Brooks took to the task of determining its nature. She discovered that it was a gas with a smaller molecular weight than the original thorium. This experiment led Rutherford to realize that transmutation of one element to another had occurred - a key step in the history of nuclear science. In 1901, Brooks was accepted at Bryn Mawr, where she immediately began work toward her Ph.D. She won a President's European Fellowship and used it to spend a year at Cambridge. Upon her return she resumed her work with Rutherford at McGill. Her research supported Rutherford's contention that elements went through multiple transformations during radioactive decay. Prior to this time, it was believed that decay was a singular event. In 1906, Brooks spent a year in Paris at the Curie laboratory, where she studied the decay rate of actinium B, a radioactive isotope of lead. In 1907, she married Frank Pitcher and, like many women scientists of her day, abandoned research for married life. Although rarely mentioned in the history books on women in science, Harriet Brooks was regarded by her contemporaries as, "next to Marie Curie, the most outstanding woman in the field of radioactivity."
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