Article pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Martha Whiteley of Imperial College, London: A Pioneering Woman Chemist Rafaelle M. Nicholson† and John W. Nicholson*,‡ †
Department of History, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 2NS, United Kingdom School of Science, University of Greenwich, Medway Campus, Chatham, Kent ME4 4TB, United Kingdom
‡
ABSTRACT: Martha Whiteley (1866−1956) was one of the most important women chemists in the United Kingdom in the first half of the 20th century. In a male-dominated field, she was an academic on the staff of a co-educational university, Imperial College, London, where she carried out research of her own choosing, rather than assisting a male professor. She played a critical role in securing the admission of women to the Chemical Society and thus gaining public acknowledgment for their role as research chemists. Later, she undertook editorial work on the multi-volume Thorpe’s Dictionary of Applied Chemistry, becoming the senior editor. Both by her example and her activities, she encouraged women to strive for equal recognition in the field of chemistry. Her contribution to science has been widely recognized and Imperial College named a suite in the conference center in her honor in 2007.Image used by permission of the Archives Imperial College London KEYWORDS: First-Year Undergraduate/General, General Public, High School/Introductory Chemistry, History/Philosophy, Textbooks/Reference Books, Women in Chemistry
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norm prevent her from having a successful career as a chemist and was a trailblazer for younger women following in her footsteps.
artha Whiteley (Figure 1) was a smart, disciplined, and motivated chemist who happened to be a woman. In the
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EDUCATION Martha Annie Whiteley was born on November 11th, 1866, in Chelsea, London, the daughter of Mary and William Sedgewick Whiteley, a house agent’s clerk.1 She was born during a critical period in the development of female education, particularly for the middle classes. Martha Whiteley attended the first school of the Girls’ Public Day School Trust (GPDST),2 Chelsea High School, soon after it was established in January 1873 at Durham House (the former home of Isaac Newton). In 1880, the school changed its location and was renamed Kensington High School.3 Although science was not widely considered a suitable subject for girls to study, it was included in the curriculum of every GPDST school. Martha Whiteley was fortunate to attend a school where her interest in chemistry could be nurtured. In 1887, she enrolled in the first class of 28 students at the Royal Holloway College, an institution that provided universitylevel education for women.4 The majority of students at Royal Holloway College sat for examinations at London University, which had awarded degrees to women since 1878.3 The college was not, however, formally part of London University. In addition, some students of the Royal Holloway College took degree examinations at the University of Oxford, though at that time their gender meant they could not be awarded degrees whatever the outcome.
Figure 1. Martha Whiteley c. 1907. Used by permission of the Archives Imperial College London.
19th and early 20th centuries, many educational avenues and careers were closed to women. Martha Whiteley did not let the © 2012 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
Published: February 21, 2012 598
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Sir Alfred Keogh, Martha Whiteley founded the Imperial College Women’s Association in 1912 as a way to assist women in practical matters and ensure their equal treatment. She remained president of the association throughout the next 20 years. Over this time period, female students grew increasingly radical, conducting campaigns for greater resources, and insisting on being called “women” rather than “lady” students. Martha Whiteley was greatly admired by the female students and they secretly gave her the affectionate title of “Queen Bee”. She continued at Imperial College until retiring in 1934, when she was paid a special retirement allowance to bring her retirement income above £300. Imperial College often helped less well off retirees in this way.5 In retirement, she continued to live close to the college and to visit her old department. She also contributed to the obituaries of two distinguished women chemists. The obituaries appeared in the Journal of the Chemical Society in the 1940s.6,7 She also contributed to the obituary of her former professor J. F. Thorpe in The Analyst.8
In 1890, Martha Whiteley obtained the degree of B.Sc. from London University, passing finals papers in inorganic chemistry, physics, mathematics, and biology. She remained at the Royal Holloway College for another year and in 1891 passed the University of Oxford honors mathematical moderations, that is, the first undergraduate year of a degree in mathematics. There was no formal chemistry department at the Royal Holloway College while Martha Whiteley was a student there; the chemistry department was established in 1893. Instead, Royal Holloway College had two science departments, natural science and mental and moral science, which provided her with chemistry education for the London degree.
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INITIAL TEACHING CAREER Martha Whiteley’s initial career was teaching school, which was not unexpected as it was one of the few professions available to women in the late 19th century. Her first post was at Wimbledon High School, which had opened in 1880 with 12 pupils. Martha Whiteley taught science there from 1891 until 1900. In 1900, Martha Whiteley was offered the position of science lecturer at St. Gabriel’s Training College for Women Teachers in Camberwell. St. Gabriel’s College had an Anglican foundation, with daily worship central to student life, a feature that may have been an attraction for Martha Whiteley. She was a profoundly religious person with a strong commitment to the Church of England.1 However, she remained there for only three years before her career developed in a different direction.
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RESEARCH Martha Whiteley was not a prolific researcher, publishing only 10 papers in her career. These papers appeared between 1895 and 1927. Her more important academic work was in editing and providing entries for the Dictionary of Applied Chemistry. Despite her relatively few papers, she did some interesting research and, unlike most of her contemporary female chemists, she was the senior author on most of her papers. Her interest in research is evident from her first paper in 1895,9 which was published from Bedford College though she was teaching at Wimbledon High School at the time. It was published with Holland Crompton, later to be Professor of Organic Chemistry at Bedford College, and dealt with the melting points of mixtures. The work is described in the paper as “much interrupted”, presumably by Whiteley’s teaching duties. The research was inspired by Raoult’s work on boiling points of liquid mixtures and aimed to identify quantitative relationships between melting points and compositions of binary mixtures of organic compounds. Several mixtures were employed, and although some pairs were found to obey a simple quantitative relationship, not all of them did. The results were thus somewhat inconclusive. Whiteley then turned her attention to pure organic chemistry and to her D.Sc. research, which was suggested by the famous professor W. A. Tilden (1842−1926) and concerned the oxime of what was then called mesoxamide (i.e., nitrosomalonamide) and related compounds. She published her first paper on the subject in 190010 and continued to publish on this group of substances intermittently until 1924, when the final and fifth part of this series appeared.11 The main compound of interest has the formula (H2NCO)2CNOH, prepared as follows:
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DOCTORATE IN SCIENCE AND UNIVERSITY CAREER Martha Whiteley had greater aspirations than were usual for her gender. Having begun research under the supervision of Holland Crompton (1866−1931) at Bedford College, London, while teaching at Wimbledon High School, in 1898 she began studying part-time for her doctorate in chemistry at the Royal College of Science, London, and continued while working at St Gabriel’s College. In 1902, she completed the degree. At this time, the Ph.D. had not been introduced to United Kingdom, so that her doctorate was a D.Sc. Having obtained this advanced qualification, she briefly returned to Royal Holloway College as a lecturer in physical chemistry before joining the staff of the Royal College of Science as a teaching scholar in the chemistry department. Martha Whiteley progressed to assistant in 1905, demonstrator in 1908, lecturer in 1914, and assistant professor in 1920. In 1907, the Royal College of Science, along with the Royal School of Mines and the City and Guilds Central Technical College, merged to form Imperial College, “an institution for advanced university-level training in science and technology, and for the promotion of research in support of industry throughout the British Empire”.5 Martha Whiteley was one of only two women on the professional staff of Imperial College at its inception. At this time Imperial College taught only about three female students per year officially, though it has been suggested that many more women may have conducted research there on an unofficial basis.5 Interestingly, for a long time, the chemistry department had more female research students than any other department, suggesting that Martha Whiteley helped attract other female students to study under her guidance. Martha Whiteley was interested in helping the younger women and by 1930 Imperial College was attracting up to 12 female students a year.5 On the invitation of the rector,
H2NCOCH2CONH2 + NOCl → (H2NCO)2 CNOH + HCl
Over the years, Whiteley reported the formation of its salts with potassium, silver, and iron(II). She also prepared various organic derivatives.10−13 The papers were sound within the limits of contemporary understanding, and Whiteley’s papers always reported extensive experimental work. In all cases, numerous related compounds were prepared and then characterized by combustion analysis. Whiteley’s final paper was published in 1927, with research student Dorothy Yapp.14 This paper dealt with the reaction of malonyldiurethane with diazonium salts, a different topic within the arena of organic chemistry. As ever, the work was a detailed 599
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Society.19 Though an academic rather than a professional body, fellowship was regarded as an important mark of the practicing chemist. As women became qualified and active in chemistry, they increasingly wanted to avail themselves of the advantages that a fellowship offered. In 1904, Whiteley was one of 19 women chemists who petitioned the Chemical Society in London to admit women to fellowship. This effort was unsuccessful, but the matter was raised again in 1908, when a vote among the 2900 fellows supported the admission of women by 1094 to 642. Despite this, the manipulations of the Society’s misogynistic secretary Henry Armstrong ensured that women were not actually admitted. What happened was reported in the journal Nature as “...a contumacious and recalcitrant element in the minority.. (setting) themselves to thwart the wishes of the majority...”.20 This shameful action meant that it was not until 1920, in the immediate aftermath of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919, that women were finally allowed to become fellows of the Chemical Society. Martha Whiteley was one of the first group of 21 women to be admitted as fellows. In 1928, she became the first woman to be elected a member of the Society’s Council.19
piece of descriptive organic chemistry and sound rather than exciting.
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WAR WORK Until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Martha Whiteley’s main academic activity was teaching an undergraduate course on quantitative organic chemistry, a course that was taken by the distinguished physical-organic chemist Christopher Ingold in the 1913−1914 session.15 When war broke out, Imperial College laboratories were requisitioned by the Ministry of Munitions, and staff were kept busy analyzing and reporting on small samples collected from the battlefields or from areas in England that had been bombed. Whiteley and her group turned their attention to the production of war gases and in the first half of 1915 produced a large number of lachrymators and irritants. One of these, known simply as SK and consisting of a mixture of ethyl iodoacetate and ethanol, proved superior to the rest and was eventually used in active service. In 1917, the Germans used a new gas, called mustard gas. Its effects were dramatic and caused the Allies to evacuate Armentières, suffering from the effects of the blisters that it caused. A small sample of this gas was sent to Martha Whiteley’s group at Imperial College and she undertook an examination of it. She wrote, “I naturally tested this property by applying a tiny smear to my arm and for nearly three months suffered great discomfort from the widespread open wound it caused in the bend of the elbow, and of which I still carry the scar”.16 Whiteley received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1920 for her war work, but was not treated equally by the authorities relative to her male colleagues. For example, her professor, J. F. Thorpe, had his annual salary of £600 raised to £1500 and paid for entirely by the Ministry of Munitions. By contrast, the ministry decided that Martha Whiteley was a “volunteer” and therefore did not merit any supplement to her pay, which remained at £300 per annum. Moreover, in Thorpe’s absence for war work, she took over the supervision of the entire organic research program of the chemistry department at the Imperial College.15
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CONCLUSION Martha Whiteley was a distinguished chemist. Her career embraced many aspects of professional chemistry, including teaching, research, and technical writing. She also played a significant part in the challenging campaign to secure admission of women to Fellowship of the Chemical Society and later served as the first woman member of Council. By her example, she encouraged other women to follow in her footsteps and is now recognized as an important pioneer woman chemist. It was immensely difficult to be a woman chemist 100 years ago, and few have achieved so much against the obstacles of prejudice and lack of opportunity that women generally faced. For that she deserves our unreserved admiration.
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
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*E-mail:
[email protected].
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OTHER SCHOLARLY WORK Martha Whiteley was coauthor with J. F. Thorpe of a manual of organic analysis, published originally in 1925.17 It was based on her undergraduate course and proved so popular that a second edition appeared only two years later. A more significant venture was her involvement with the Dictionary of Applied Chemistry. This was originally compiled by T. E. Thorpe and first published in 1890. Whiteley had become involved with the preparation of some of the volumes of the second edition and, when a third edition was planned, she was invited to edit it in collaboration with J. F. Thorpe (no relation). This involved not only editorial duties, but also writing several of the entries. She continued with this work after her retirement from Imperial College as the number of volumes grew. After J. F. Thorpe’s death in 1940, she assumed the role of editor-in-chief.18 The last volume on which she worked appeared in 1954, and she continued to carry out other editorial work until shortly before her death on the 24th May 1956.19
REFERENCES
(1) Barrett, A. ’Martha Whiteley’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; The University Press: Oxford, 2004. (2) In the 19th century, there were campaigns among the British middle classes to allow girls to be educated to the same extent as their brothers. In 1866, the government set up the Schools Enquiry Commission to investigate the state of secondary-level schooling in England. This Commission reported in 1868 and expressed concern that “there is a long-established and inveterate prejudice...that girls are less capable of mental cultivation, and less in need of it, than boys”.21 They went on to conclude that there was a “general deficiency” in secondary education for girls. Partly as a response to this, in 1871, sisters Maria Grey and Emily Shirreff founded the “National Union for Improvement of the Education of Women of All Classes”. Its main aim was “to promote the establishment of good and cheap day schools for all classes”.22 To raise funds, the Union created a limited liability company, which was named the Girls’ Public Day School Company (from 1905 the Girls’ Public Day School Trust, GPDST). By 1905 there were 37 GPDST schools in existence, known as “high schools”, attracting a mixture of social classes due to their relatively low fees. By demonstrating the positive effects of educating girls, they proved to be enormously influential and completely changed public perceptions of female education in Britain.
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SOCIETY Martha Whiteley played a significant role in the long battle to secure the admission of women to Fellowship of the Chemical 600
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(3) Bingham, C. The History of the Royal Holloway College, 1886− 1986; Constable: London, 1987. (4) At the same time as concern began to emerge about girls’ education, there were similar concerns about university education for women. In 1870, Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon set up a college at Hitchen, Hertfordshire, which moved to become Girton College, Cambridge and was the first university college for women. In 1878, Lady Margaret Hall was established as the first women’s college in Oxford and in the same year London University voted to admit women to its degrees. As part of this movement, Royal Holloway College was established in 1887. Funded by Thomas Holloway, a Victorian businessman and philanthropist, it had the aim of affording “the best education suitable for women of the middle and upper classes”.23 Later a variety of women’s colleges opened in universities, including St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, and Newnham College, Cambridge. London also saw the foundation of Bedford College in the late 19th century. Despite this academic activity, women were not formally admitted to degrees at Oxford until 1920 and at Cambridge until 1948. (5) Gay, H. The History of Imperial College London 1907−2007; Imperial College Press: London, 2007, p1. (6) Moore, T. S.; Whiteley, M. A. Obituary notice of Mary Boyle (1874−1944). J. Chem. Soc. 1945, 719. (7) Whiteley, M. A. Obituary notice of Ida Smedley McLean (1877− 1944). J. Chem. Soc. 1946, 65−66. (8) Whiteley, M. A.; Kon, G. A. R. Obituary notice of Jocelyn Field Thorpe (1872−1940). Analyst (Cambridge, U.K.) 1940, 65, 483−484. (9) Crompton, H.; Whiteley, M. A. The melting point of mixtures. J. Chem. Soc., Trans. 1895, 67, 327−337. (10) Whiteley, M. A. The oxime of mesoxamide and some allied compounds. J. Chem. Soc., Trans. 1900, 77, 1040−1046. (11) Plowman, A.; Whiteley, M. A. The oxime of mesoxamide (isonitrosomalonamide) and some allied compounds. Part V. Structural and stereo-isomerism in the methyl ethers of the p-tolyl derivatives. J. Chem. Soc.; Trans 1924, 125, 587−604. (12) Whiteley, M. A. Note on the action of barium hydroxide on dimethylvioluric acid. J. Chem. Soc.; Trans 1903, 83, 18. (13) Rendall, A. G.; Whiteley, M. A. The oxime of mesoxamide (isonitrosomalonamide) and some allied compounds. Part IV. The ethers of isonitrosomalonanilide, isonitrosomalondimethylamide, and isonitrosomalondibenzylamide. J. Chem. Soc., Trans. 1922, 121, 2110− 2119. (14) Whiteley, M. A.; Yapp, D. The reaction between diazonium salts and malonyldiurethane. J. Chem. Soc. 1927, 521−528. (15) Leffek, K. Sir Christopher Ingold: A Major Prophet in Organic Chemistry; Nova Lion Press: Victoria, BC, Canada, 1996. (16) Thorpe, J. F.; Whiteley, M. A. A Student’s Manual of Organic Chemical Analysis, Qualitative and Quantitative; Longmans, Green & Co: London, 1925. (17) Rayner-Canham, M.; Rayner-Canham, G. Chemistry Was Their Life: Pioneer British Women Chemists, 1880−1949; Imperial College Press: London, 2008; p 455. (18) Creese, M. R. S. British women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who contributed to research in the chemical sciences. Brit. J. Hist. Sci. 1991, 24, 275−305. (19) Rayner-Canham, M.; Rayner-Canham, G. Chemistry Was Their Life: Pioneer British Women Chemists, 1880−1949; Imperial College Press: London, 2008; pp 122−124. (20) Editor. Women and the Fellowship of the Chemical Society. Nature 1909, 79, 429−431. (21) Beale, D. Reports issued by the Schools’ Enquiry Commission on the Education of Girls, David Nutt, London, 1870; p 1. (22) Kamm, J. Indicative Past; Allen and Unwin: London, 1971; p 39. (23) The Royal Holloway College 1887−1937; Powell, M., Ed.; Royal Holloway College: Egham, Surrey, 1937; p 24.
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