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Isabelle Stone
American physicist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Isabelle Stone (October 18, 1868 – 1966) was an American physicist and educator. She was one of the founders of the American Physical Society.[1] She was among the first women to earn a PhD in physics in the United States.
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Early life and education
Stone was born in 1868 to Harriet H. Leonard Stone and Leander Stone in Chicago.[2] Her father was an editor of the Chicago Times, and her mother was the president of the Chicago YWCA and a charter member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.[3]
Stone completed a bachelor's degree at Wellesley College in 1890.[1]
She then completed her doctoral work at the University of Chicago under Albert A. Michelson, earning her PhD in 1897.[4][5] Stone was the first woman to earn a PhD in physics at the University of Chicago. She was also among the first women to earn a PhD in physics in the United States, earning hers just two years after Caroline Willard Baldwin earned a Doctor of Science from Cornell University in 1895.[6]
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Career
After completing her undergraduate education at Wellesley College, Stone moved back to Chicago where she worked at Hull House under Jane Addams.[3][5]
Stone taught for a year at the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore. She was a physics instructor at Vassar College from 1898 to 1906,[7] and head of the physics department at Sweet Briar College from 1915 to 1923.[8] From 1908 to 1914, she and her sister Harriet Stone ran a school for American girls in Rome,[1] and then in 1927 they founded The Misses Stone's School for Girls in Washington, D.C.[9][5]
Stone was one of two women (out of a total of 836) to attend the first International Congress of Physics in Paris (the other being Marie Curie).[4] In 1899, she was one of forty physicists (and one of two women, the other being Marcia Keith) at the first meeting of the American Physical Society, held at Columbia University.[10]
Stone's research focused on the electrical resistance and other properties of thin films.[1] Her 1897 thesis, On the Electrical Resistance of Thin Films, showed that very thin metal films showed a higher resistivity than the bulk metal.[11]
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Publications
- On the electrical resistance of thin films, January 1898, Physical Review, vol. VI, no. 30
- Color in Platinum Films, July 1905, Physical Review (Series I), vol. 21, Issue 1, pp. 27–40
- Properties of thin films when deposited in a vacuum[12]
Personal life
Stone lived with her sister Harriet Stone in Washington, D.C. and then in Miami in her later years.[5] Some of her letters are in the papers of George B. Pegram at Columbia University.[7]
See also
References
External links
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