2009-03-24
post/89521329
From Atoms to Patterns: the scientists behind the designs
I’m cutting it a bit fine for my Ada Lovelace Day post, and I did take some inspiration from Chris Thorpe’s post.
This is Dr Helen Dick Megaw, who was a X-ray crystallographer from the 1930s to 1970s. The picture here was taken from the ‘The Souvenir Book of Crystal Designs’, which reflected part of her work in using crystallography-based designs in textiles and other materials for the 1951 Festival of Britain.
In a further link to Chris’ post, Megaw was a friend of Dorothy Hodgkin, writing this letter to her in 1950. You can find out more about her life in this Independent obituary from 2002.
I think the Atoms to Patterns exhibition at the Wellcome Collection was one of the best I saw last year, and it was great to see women scientists making it into the field even then. It’s still not easy now, of course, but pioneers like Megaw, Franklin and Hodgkin really were fighting for every inch of space they got.
(I might have picked Emmy Noether, or Jocelyn Bell Burnell, had candace not written so well about them on epistolary, back when it was a blog. Ah well.)
