Kathleen Lonsdale 1253911 225211417 2008-07-12T14:08:25Z Seanwal111111 5464220 Since Ireland was part of the UK in 1903, she was born in UK. Anyone UK-born is British. She moved to England at age 5 and never returned to Ireland. So she wasn't Irish. I also deleted trivia. {{Infobox Scientist | name = Kathleen Lonsdale | image = KathleenLonsdale.jpg | caption = Dame Kathleen Lonsdale (née Yardley){{puic|Image:KathleenLonsdale.jpg|log=2008 July 6}} | birth_date = {{birth date|1903|1|28|mf=y}} | birth_place = [[Newbridge]], [[County Kildare]], [[Ireland]] | death_date = {{death date and age|1971|4|1|1903|1|28}} | death_place = [[London]], [[England]] | field =[[crystallography|Crystallographer]] | work_institution = [[University College London]]</br>[[Royal Institution]]</br>[[University of Leeds]] | alma_mater = [[University College London]] | doctoral_advisor = [[William Henry Bragg]] [[Image:Nobel prize medal.svg|20px]] | doctoral_students = | known_for = [[X-ray crystallography]] | prizes = [[Davy Medal]] (1957) | religion = [[Quaker]] (1935 onwards) | footnotes = }} Dame '''Kathleen Lonsdale''' (née Yardley) ([[28 January]] [[1903]] - [[1 April]] [[1971]]) was a [[crystallography|crystallographer]], who established the structure of [[benzene]] by X-ray and neutron diffraction methods in 1929, and [[hexachlorobenzene]] by fourier spectral methods in 1931. During her career she attained a number of firsts for a female scientist including first woman elected a [[Fellow of the Royal Society]], first woman tenured professor at [[University College London]], first woman president of the [[International Union of Crystallography]], and first woman president of the [[British Association for the Advancement of Science]]. == Biography == Lonsdale was born at [[Newbridge, County Kildare]], [[Ireland]], the tenth child of Harry Yardley, the town postmaster, and Jessie Cameron. Her family moved to [[England]] when she was five. She studied at [[Woodford County High School (London)|Woodford County High School]] for Girls, then moved to [[Ilford County High School]] for Boys to study mathematics and science because the girls' school did not offer these subjects. She earned her B.Sc. from [[Bedford College for Women]] in 1922, graduating in physics with an M.Sc. from [[University College London]] in 1924. She then joined the crystallography research team headed by [[William Henry Bragg]] at the [[Royal Institution]]. In 1927 she married Thomas Jackson Lonsdale. They had three children &ndash; Jane, Nancy, and Stephen - the latter of whom became a medical doctor and worked for several years in [[Malawi]] before becoming an actor in a North Yorkshire theatre company. Though she had been brought up in the Baptist religion as a child, Kathleen Lonsdale became a [[Religious Society of Friends|Quaker]] in 1935, simultaneously with her husband. Both of them were committed [[pacifism|pacifists]] and were attracted to Quakerism in no small part for this reason. She served a month in [[Holloway (HM Prison)|Holloway prison]] during the [[Second World War]] because she refused to register for civil defence duties or pay a fine for refusing to register. At the annual meeting of the British Quakers in 1953 she delivered the keynote [[Swarthmore Lecture]], under the title ''Removing the Causes of War''. Lonsdale worked at the University of Leeds in the late 1920s, was mostly a full-time mother of small children during the early 1930s, and returned to work with Bragg at the Royal Institution as a researcher in 1934. She was awarded a D.Sc. from [[University College London]] in 1936 while at the Royal Institution. In addition to discovering the structure of benzene and hexachlorobenzene, Lonsdale worked on the synthesis of [[diamond]]s. She was a pioneer in the use of [[X-ray]]s to study crystals. Lonsdale became one of the first two female [[Fellow of the Royal Society|Fellows of the Royal Society]] in [[1945]] (the other was the biochemist [[Marjory Stephenson]]). In 1949, Lonsdale became a professor of [[chemistry]] and the head of the Department of Crystallography at [[University College, London]]. She was the first woman professor at that college, a position she held until [[1968]] when she was named [[Professor Emeritus]]. A Kathleen Lonsdale Building is named in her honour today at University College London. She was given the title [[Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire]] in 1956. Lonsdale became the first woman president of the [[International Union of Crystallography]] in [[1966]]. Lonsdale was active in encouraging young people to study science and was the first woman president of the [[British Association for the Advancement of Science]] in [[1967]]. She died in 1971, aged 68. ''[[Lonsdaleite]]'' an [[Allotropes of carbon|allotrope of carbon]] was named in her honour; it is a rare form of [[diamond]] found in [[meteorite]]s. == Selected Writings == *"The Structure of the Benzene Ring in Hexamethylbenzene," ''Proceedings of the Royal Society'' 123A: 494 (1929). *"An X-Ray Analysis of the Structure of Hexachlorobenzene, Using the Fourier Method," ''Proceedings of the Royal Society'' 133A: 536 (1931). *''Simplified Structure Factor and Electron Density Formulae for the 230 Space Groups of Mathematical Crystallography'', G. Bell & Sons, London, 1936. *"Diamonds, Natural and Artificial," ''Nature'' 153: 669 (1944). *"Divergent Beam X-ray Photography of Crystals," ''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society'' 240A: 219 (1947). *''Crystals and X-Rays'', G. Bell & Sons, London, 1948. *''Removing the Causes of War'', 1953. == References and External Links == <references/> * The entry for Kathleen Lonsdale in ''Encyclopedia of World Biography'' (published by Thomson Gale Group) is well done and available in full at [http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3404703959.html] (or [http://www.bookrags.com/biography/kathleen-lonsdale/]) and contains further references. * The biography of Kathleen Lonsdale at the website of the ''Royal Society of Chemistry'' (UK) is good in itself and contains a list of further references: See [http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2003/January/substance.asp]. * A short biography derived from the ''Dictionary of Scientific Biography'', and including some quotations from Lonsdale about her career, is available at [http://cwp.library.ucla.edu/Phase2/Lonsdale,_Kathleen_Yardley@8480138866.html]. * An overview of the scope and content of the collection of Lonsdale's papers that are kept at University College London is presented at [http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/news/03030502.html]. * A short biography distinguished from the others by having a good photograph is at [http://understandingscience.ucc.ie/pages/sci_kathleenlonsdale.htm]. <!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]] --> {{Persondata |NAME= Lonsdale, Kathleen |ALTERNATIVE NAMES= |SHORT DESCRIPTION= [[United Kingdom|British]] [[crystallography|crystallographer]] |DATE OF BIRTH= [[January 28]], [[1903]] |PLACE OF BIRTH= [[Newbridge]], [[County Kildare]], [[Ireland]], [[United Kingdom]] |DATE OF DEATH= [[April 1]], [[1971]] |PLACE OF DEATH= [[London]], [[England]] }} {{DEFAULTSORT: Lonsdale, Kathleen}} [[Category:1903 births|Lonsdale, Kathleen]] [[Category:1971 deaths|Lonsdale, Kathleen]] [[Category:Alumni of Royal Holloway, University of London|Lonsdale, Kathleen]] [[Category:Alumni of University College London|Lonsdale, Kathleen]] [[Category:Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire|Lonsdale, Kathleen]] [[Category:Fellows of the Royal Society|Lonsdale, Kathleen]] [[Category:Women chemists|Lonsdale, Kathleen]] [[Category:Newbridge, County Kildare]] [[Category:People from County Kildare|Lonsdale, Kathleen]] [[Category:Old Parkonians|Lonsdale, Kathleen]] [[Category:British pacifists]] [[de:Kathleen Lonsdale]]