A CELEBRATION OF OUR SECTORS SUFFRAGETTE SISTERS LIV THOMPSON AND KATIE GREENOUGH

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1 A CELEBRATION OF OUR SECTORS SUFFRAGETTE SISTERS LIV THOMPSON AND KATIE GREENOUGH

This year marked the centenary of the passing of the Representation of People and Parliament (Qualification of Women) Acts, 1918.

2 This year marked the centenary of the passing of the Representation of People and Parliament (Qualification of Women) Acts, The act gave some women the right to vote for the first time and opened the door to voting on equal terms in Throughout 2018, to celebrate this centenary, the Women s social and Political Union (WSPU) flag, has been relayed around the UK, being flown above prominent buildings to celebrate a momentous date in history. Welcoming the flag to Cumbria at the National Nuclear Laboratory during the relay journey, gave us a moment to reflect on the women who have made a significant contribution to the nuclear industry and, to celebrate how their pioneering work has paved the way for our current Scientists and Engineers. The nuclear industry is indebted to a number of women who have broken down barriers and pursued their interest in nuclear energy and radionuclide applications. However, often the achievements of these women have been downplayed into the shadows so; as the relay comes to a close we d like to reflect on some of our industry s un-sung heroines: Marie Curie ( ) Perhaps our most famous sister, Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person, and only woman to win twice and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences! Her achievements include the development of the theory of radioactivity, techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes and the discovery of two elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies into the treatment of neoplasms were conducted using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today. Despite her academic success, Marie continued to face great opposition from male scientists in France, and never received significant financial benefits for her work.

3 Harriett Brooks ( ) Brooks conducted a series of experiments to determine the nature of the radioactive emissions from thorium. These experiments served as one of the foundations for the development of nuclear science; she is considered to be one of the leading women of her time in the field of nuclear physics, noted in particular for her research on nuclear transmutations and radioactivity. Lise Meitner ( ) Paving the way for so many to follow, Meitner pushed through a barrage of challenges to produce the work that she has only received credit for posthumously. In 1939 Meitner led the group of scientists who first discovered nuclear fission of uranium when it absorbed a neutron. She spent most of her scientific career in Berlin, Germany, where she was a physics professor and a department head at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute; she was the first woman to become a full professor of physics in Germany. She lost these positions in 1930s Neo-Nazi Germany and in 1938 she fled to Sweden. She wasn t awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for nuclear fission; it was awarded exclusively to her long-time collaborator Otto Hahn.

4 Marietta Blau ( ) Blau studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna ; she s credited with developing (photographic) nuclear emulsions that were able to image and accurately measure high energy nuclear particles; establishing a method to accurately study reactions caused by cosmic ray events. Her nuclear emulsions significantly advanced the field of particle physics and for her work she was nominated for the 1950 Nobel Prize in Physics by Erwin Schrödinger. Ida Noddack ( ) Ida Noddack worked alongside Otto Carl Berg and Walter Noddack at the Physico-Technical Research Agency in Berlin. There, in 1925, the team discovered element 75, Rhenium. In 1934, Noddack published "On Element 93 "a paper which rebuked Enrico Fermi's claim to have possibly produced transuranic elements. Although the paper was ignored at the time, it now serves as one of the earliest expressions of the idea of nuclear fission. Noddack was three times nominated for a Nobel Prize -- once by herself in 1933, and twice more with her husband, Walter, in 1935 and 1937.

5 Irène Joliot-Curie ( ) Irène Curie worked together with her mother to provide mobile X-ray units during World War I. She resumed her studies at the university in Paris after the war and later worked at the institute that her parents had founded. It was there that she conducted her Nobel Prize-awarded work together with Frédéric Joliot, whom she married in Together they discovered that radiation from radioactive substances also became an important tool in investigating atoms. They bombarded a thin piece of aluminium with alpha particles (helium atom nuclei) and in 1934, a new kind of radiation was discovered that left traces inside an apparatus known as a cloud chamber. The pair discovered that the radiation from the aluminium continued even after the source of radiation was removed. Meaning that, for the first time in history, a radioactive element had been created artificially. Jointly with her husband, Joliot-Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for this discovery. Katherine Way ( ) An American physicist and one of the Manhattan Projects leading female scientists, Way examined neutron flux data from Enrico Fermi's experiments with nuclear reactor designs. Way co-edited One World or None: A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb. A New York Times bestseller, the book highlighted scientists' concerns about the implications of nuclear weapons. It included contributions from Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, Niels Bohr, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Leo Szilard. In 1953, she created the Nuclear Data Project (NDP), an effort to organize and share vast amounts of nuclear data. She made incredibly important contributions to how data is gathered, evaluated, and presented in the field of nuclear physics.

6 Toshiko Yuasa ( ) Yuasa, a native of Japan moved to Paris in 1940 working under Frédéric Joliot-Curie, where she researched the alpha and beta particles emitted by artificial radioactive nuclei and the energy spectrum of beta particles. In August 1944, Yuasa was forced to leave Paris for Berlin. She continued her research and developed her own beta-ray spectrometer. In 1945, she was ordered to return to Japan; she travelled with her spectrometer carried on her back! Yuasa has been well decorated for her work. In 2002, the most touching recognition was announced, Ochanomizu University introduced the Toshiko Yuasa Prize, a sponsorship for young women scientists to travel to France for further study. Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber ( ) Goldhaber was a German-born Jewish-American nuclear physicist. Once again working through adversity; she earned her PhD. from the University of Munich. During The Holocaust, she escaped to London and later to the United States where she studied neutron-proton and neutron-nucleus reaction cross sections, and gamma radiation emission and absorption by nuclei in Around this time she also observed that spontaneous nuclear fission is accompanied by the release of neutrons a result that had been theorized earlier but had yet to be shown. Her work with spontaneous nuclear fission was classified during the war, and was only published later, in 1946.

7 Chien-Shiung Wu ( ) Nicknamed the First Lady of Physics, The Chinese Madame Curie and the Queen of Nuclear Research, Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese-American experimental physicist who made significant contributions to the Manhattan Project. She helped develop the process for separating uranium metal into uranium-235 and uranium-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion. But she is best known for conducting the Wu experiment, which contradicted the hypothetical law of conservation of parity. This discovery resulted in her colleagues Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang winning the 1957 Nobel Prize in physics, and also earned Wu the inaugural Wolf Prize in Physics in Fay Ajzenberg-Selove ( ) The only woman in a class of 100 people, Fay Ajzenberg-Selove graduated in 1946 with a degree in engineering- a true revolutionary! But when she was hired as an assistant professor of physics at Boston University, the Dean lowered her salary by 15 percent when he learned Ajzenberg was a woman; Ajzenberg refused the position until the initial salary was restored. In the 1960s, she worked at Haverford College, where she was the first full-time female faculty member. In 1972, she applied for one of three tenured positions there. She was not hired; the reasons cited were age and "inadequate research publications". Ajzenberg-Selove was only 46, had a citation count higher than everyone in the physics department except for Nobel laureate J. Robert Schrieffer, and was Nuclear Physics Section chair of the American Physical Society. She filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and in 1973 the University of Pennsylvania was ordered to give her a tenured professorship.

8 In the centenary year of women s suffrage the nuclear industry can gain inspiration from these women who have fought so hard for progress. They showed that deeds are more important than words - a sentiment that the original Suffragettes identified with. So, would our Suffragette Sisters be pleased in where we have come as a sector in the last 100 years? Well, we ve made some great progress; 2019 will mark the centenary of The Sex Discrimination Removal Act (1919) which meant women could no longer be disqualified from certain professions on the grounds of gender. In 1970 the Equal Pay Act was passed, followed by The Sex Discrimination Act in 1975, and finally the Equality Act of 2010 identified characteristics that were to be legally protected including gender. Passing of these key pieces of legislation has allowed female scientists and engineers the opportunity to gain higher education qualifications and to work in industries such as nuclear far more freely than in the days of Marie Curie and we ve seen great strides forward in female representation in the sector as a result. The nuclear industry now consists of 22% female representation (up from 17% since 2014), 8% of the boards of nuclear organisations are held by females and the gender pay gap in the general STEM sector has reduced by 10% since There s much work still to do but as we celebrate the history of women s rights the industry recognises that gender parity is essential to progression. It only leaves us to wonder where we will be when we celebrate the Suffragette movement s bi-century in 2118!

The life and work of Marie Curie

Reading Practice The life and work of Marie Curie Marie Curie is probably the most famous woman scientist who has ever lived. Born Maria Sklodowska in Poland in 1867, she is famous for her work on radioactivity,