Women in Science - Kathleen Lonsdale's 1970 Discourse

Watch a historic 1970 lecture where pioneering crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale addresses the challenges and barriers she encountered throughout her groundbreaking career as a female scientist during the inter-war years. Discover how Lonsdale, who proved the flat structure of the benzene ring in 1929 using X-ray diffraction methods and was the first to use Fourier spectral methods in crystallography, navigated the scientific landscape as one of the first women to achieve numerous firsts in her field. Learn about her remarkable achievements including being one of the first two women elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1945, becoming the first female professor at University College London, and serving as the first woman president of both the International Union of Crystallography and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Explore how her mentor William Bragg actively promoted women in science and understand why X-ray crystallography had an unusually high proportion of women researchers compared to other scientific fields of the time. Gain insights into the career and knowledge construction of a talented woman scientist during an era when opportunities for women in science were severely limited, as Lonsdale reflects on her experiences as both a Quaker pacifist and a researcher whose work was conducted under the shadow of World War II.