Ruby Payne-Scott

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Ruby Violet Payne-Scott (later Hall) May 28, 1912 - May 25, 1981 was an Australian pioneer in radiophysics and radio astronomy and is believed to have been the first female radio astronomer.

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[edit] Early life

Payne-Scott was born in Grafton, New South Wales, Australia, on May 28, 1912. She later moved to Sydney to live with her aunt, and complete secondary schooling at Sydney Girls High School.[1] She won two scholarships to undertake tertiary education at the University of Sydney, where she completed a BSc in 1933, an MSc in 1936, and a Diploma of Education in 1938.

[edit] Career

One of the best physicists that Australia has ever produced and one of the first people in the world to consider the possibility of radio astronomy, and thereby responsible for what is now a fundamental part of the modern lexicon of science, this brilliant woman was often the only female in her classes at the University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

Her career arguably reached its zenith while working for the Australian government's Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (then called CSIR now known as CSIRO) at Lucas Heights, Sydney. Some of her fundamental contributions to solar radio astronomy came at the end of this period and during her early "home duties" career.

During WWII she was engaged in top secret work investigating radar. She was also at the time a communist and an early advocate for women’s rights.

An avid bush-walker she met and fell in love with a fellow bush-walker, Bill Hall. They secretly married as at that time the Commonwealth government had legislated that a married woman could not hold a permanent position within the public service. She continued to work for CSIR while secretly married until her first pregnancy raised the issue of her marriage. She was obliged to resign when her marriage was exposed. Her treatment by CSIRO resulted in some years of written exchanges expressing the unfairness of this legislation.

She never changed her name - even after her marriage became public though she and Bill Hall remained married to her death, having had two children - Peter Hall, a renowned mathematician, and Fiona Hall, one of Australia's great visual artists.

[edit] Professional roles

  • Research fellow, Cancer Research Committee, University of Sydney, 1932-35.
  • Engineer, AWA Ltd, 1939-41.
  • Division of Radiophysics, CSIR (now CSIRO), 1941-51.
  • Home duties 1951-62.
  • Mathematics/science teacher, Danebank Church of England School, Sydney, 1963-75.

[edit] Publications

  • Relative intensity of spectral lines in indium and gallium. Nature, 131 (1933), 365-366.
  • (With W.H. Love) Tissue cultures exposed to the influence of a magnetic field. Nature, 137 (1936), 277.
  • Notes on the use of photographic films as a means of measuring gamma ray dosage. Sydney. University. Cancer Research Committee. Journal., 7 (1936), 170-175.
  • The wavelength distribution of the scattered radiation in a medium traversed by a beam of X or gamma rays. British Journal of Radiology, N.S., 10 (1937), 850-870.
  • (With A.L. Green) Superheterodyne tracking charts. II. A.W.A. Technical Review, 5 (1941), 251-274; Wireless Engineer, 19 (1942), 290-302.
  • A note on the design of iron-cored coils at audio frequencies. A.W.A. Technical Review, 6 (1943), 91-96.
  • (With A.G. Little) The position and movement on the solar disk of sources of radiation at a frequency of 97 Mc/s. III. Outbursts. Aust. J. of Scientific Research A, 5 (1952), 32-46.

[edit] Death

Ruby Payne-Scott died in Sydney, New South Wales, May 25, 1981.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Distinguished Old Girls. The History of Sydney Girls High School. Sydney Girls High School. Retrieved on 2008-05-25.

[edit] External links