She was the youngest of ten children, four of whom died in infancy.[13] During her time living in Newbridge she attended St. Patrick's National School,[14][15] and her earliest memories were of the local Church of Ireland service and the Methodist Sunday school.[16]
Kathleen's father had issues with alcohol, which meant her family was often short on money. [17] As the unrest in Ireland became more severe Kathleen's mother separated from her father and took the rest of the family to England.[17][18]
Her family moved to
Seven Kings, Essex, England, when she was five years old.[5] The family's financial troubles meant the four older children left school early to support the family. For the same reason, her brother Fred was unable to take up an educational scholarship, though he later become one of the first wireless operators.[19]
Kathleen attended Downshall Elementary school from 1908 to 1914.[20] She studied at Ilford County High School for Girls, then transferred to
Ilford County High School for Boys to study mathematics and science, because the girls' school did not offer these subjects. Kathleen had the highest score in physics that any student at London University ever had.[20] She graduated with a
Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree from
Bedford College for Women in 1922, and
Master of Science (MSc) degree in physics from
University College London in 1924.[21]
Career and research
In 1924 she joined the
crystallography research team headed by
William Henry Bragg at the
Royal Institution. Following her marriage in 1927, she moved to the
University of Leeds, but continued to correspond with Bragg.[22] From 1929 to 1934, she started a family and largely stayed at home while continuing her work calculating structure factors.[23][24] Her husband Thomas Lonsdale was a textile chemist who supported his wife's research. He encouraged his wife to work from home and to go back to work when offered.[24] He worked at Silk Research Association in Leeds after they were married.[24]
In 1934, Lonsdale returned to work with Bragg at the Royal Institution as a researcher. She was awarded a
DSc from
University of London in 1936 while at the Royal Institution. In addition to discovering the structure of benzene and hexachlorobenzene, Lonsdale worked on the synthesis of diamonds. She was a pioneer in the use of
X-rays to study crystals. Lonsdale was one of the first two women elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1945[1] (the other was the biochemist
Marjory Stephenson).
Lonsdale returned to University College London (UCL) in 1946 with the rank of
reader.[25] In 1949, she was appointed Professor of Chemistry and head of the Department of Crystallography at UCL.[5] She was the first woman to be made a professor at UCL,[26] an appointment she held until 1968 when she was named
professor emeritus.
As a keen table tennis player, Lonsdale made use of ping pong balls to demonstrate the molecular structure to her students. One such model—of the
silicate groupSi2O5—is in the
Science Museum collection [27]
During her later career, she became interested in stones and minerals produced in the human body e.g.
kidney stones or
gall stones.[28] Some of her crystallographic models are in the collection of the
Science Museum in London.
Simplified Structure Factor and Electron Density Formulae for the 230 Space Groups of Mathematical Crystallography, G. Bell & Sons, London, 1936.
"Divergent Beam X-ray Photography of Crystals," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 240A: 219 (1947).
Crystals and X-Rays, G. Bell & Sons, London, 1948.
“Human Stones”, Science Vol. 159, Issue 3820, pp. 1199-1207, 15 Mar 1968
Quakers visit Russia, Edited by Kathleen Lonsdale : an account of a visit to the Soviet Union in July 1951 by seven British Quakers, 145 pages. Published by the East-West Relations Group of the Friends Peace Committee. Other authors: Margaret Ann Backhouse,[29] B Leslie Metcalfe,
Gerald Bailey, Paul S Cadbury,
Mildred Creak, Frank Edmead.
Removing the Causes of War, 1953.
Is peace possible? (1957)
Forth in Thy Name: The Life and Work of Godfrey Mowatt (1959)[30]
Personal life
After beginning her research career, in 1927 Yardley married Thomas Jackson Lonsdale. They had three children – Jane, Nancy, and Stephen. Stephen became a medical doctor and worked for several years in
Nyasaland (now
Malawi).[citation needed]
Though she had been brought up in the Baptist denomination as a child, Kathleen Lonsdale became a
Quaker in 1935, simultaneously with her husband. Already committed
pacifists, both were attracted to Quakerism for this reason.[31] She was a Sponsor of the
Peace Pledge Union.[32]
She served a month in
Holloway prison during the
Second World War because she refused to register for civil defence duties, or to pay a fine for refusing to register. During this time she experienced a range of issues which would eventually result in Lonsdale becoming a
prison reform activist[33] and she joined the
Howard League for Penal Reform.[34]
"What I was not prepared for was the general insanity of an administrative system in which lip service is paid to the idea of segregation and the ideal of reform, when in practice the opportunities for contamination and infection are innumerable, and those responsible for re-education practically nil"[35]
On 1 April 2021, English Heritage unveiled a
blue plaque at her childhood home in 19 Colenso Road,
Seven Kings, London where she lived from 1911 to 1927, aged 8–24.[48][49][50][51]
The Kathleen Lonsdale room at
Friends House, London, UK is named after her.[52]
^January 2003, Chemistry World1.
"Woman of substance". Chemistry World.
Archived from the original on 19 December 2018. Retrieved 19 December 2018.{{
cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
^"Kathleen Lonsdale". Astrea. University College London. 8 February 2023. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
^"Female Firsts: a celebration of pioneering women". UCL News. 14 December 2018. Retrieved 2 November 2023. Crystallography specialist Dame Professor Kathleen Lonsdale, the first woman to be elected a fellow of the Royal Society and UCL's first female Professor