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Joan Meiners, Ecology and Environmental Data Journalism suggest, Ayrton was the first woman to recieve the Hughes Medal for outstanding research in the field of energy, but still the Royal Society refused her membership.
Mathematician, inventor, and friend of Marie Curie, Hertha Ayrton was an
outspoken advocate for women’s rights in science and in the voting
booth. Her Ayrton fan dispelled toxic fumes from WWI trenches, and her
research on London’s lamp functioning landed her the first Hughes Medal
awarded to a woman. Although her inventions impressed her peers and
saved the lives of soldiers, few of her colleagues supported her efforts
for women’s equality during her lifetime...
Hertha Ayrton - Photo: Via Wikimedia
A friendship forged in rejection
Being refused admission to a prestigious scientific society put Hertha in good company. During the same time period, Marie Curie was refused admission to the Academie des Sciences, even though she had already won a Nobel Prize in Physics and was about to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. When Curie was nominated for membership in the Academie in Nature, Hertha wrote a letter to the members on Marie Curie’s behalf requesting “equality of treatment of intellectual work without regard to the sex of the workers.”...
Hertha’s support of women was not limited to the suffrage movement. In addition to supporting the scientific endeavors of her friend, Marie Curie, Hertha was also an outspoken voice for the rights of women in science. According to her 1923 obituary, “It was her opinion that women were naturally inventive and original, and that these qualities, joined to the capacity for patient work that is universally allowed to be theirs, especially fitted them for scientific work.” She fought for this principle every day of her life.
And as her obituary writer also noted, “she was a good woman, despite of her being tinged with the scientific afflatus.”
Source: Massive Science
