Edna Carter

Edna Carter (born January 29, 1872 in High Cliff , Wisconsin , United States , † May 14, 1963 in Pleasant Valley , New York ) was an American physicist and university professor .

family

She was born the youngest of nine children. Her parents were from New Hampshire and had moved to a rural area in Wisconsin near Lake Winnebago . Her father ran a paddle steamer (sternwheeler) named after the Confederate Lieutenant Colonel (Lieutenant Colonel) Benjamin Franklin Carter (1831–1863 ), which transported passengers and cargo to Oshkosh , Appleton and Fond du Lac . Her childhood was marked by the joy of discovering and exploring. She is said to have retained this throughout her entire professional life into old age.

Act

Edna Carter studied and taught at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie , New York , and directed the Institute of Physics from 1919 to 1939

Edna Carter studied biology and physics with Marcella O'Grady from 1890 . In 1894 she graduated from Vassar College and then worked as an assistant at its physical institute. From 1898 to 1899 she worked with Albert Abraham Michelson and Robert Andrews Millikan at the University of Chicago . She then worked for five years as a physics lecturer at the Wisconsin State Normal School (from 1927: Wisconsin State Teachers College-Milwaukee , from 1951: Wisconsin State College-Milwaukee ) in Oshkosh , where young teachers who had been trained by John Dewey were with the best teachers from Wisconsin. At a nearby high school, Carter became assistant director. After their professor O'Grady married the German biologist Theodor Boveri, the Carters asked to come to Germany to continue studying and doing a doctorate there . 1904 traveled Carter across the Atlantic to Europe and met in England during a meeting of the British Science Association with Lord Kelvin , Sir Oliver Lodge and the Nobel Prize winner Lord Rayleigh and other renowned physicists to exchange views.

At the Julius Maximilians University in Würzburg she worked in the physical laboratories with a Finnish, a Norwegian, several Russian and German physicists. She got to know the Nobel laureate in physics Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen well and used the same induction coil for her work with which he discovered X-rays . This spool was later given to the Deutsches Museum . Carter would later like to talk about this time of "academic freedom" in the "great Germany" she loved, about the in-depth discussions in the laboratories, the weekly colloquia , which were mostly followed by "post colloquia" and "post colloquia", which continued well into the Night were enough. She was the only woman in these groups, but was always accepted as equal by her male colleagues. Together with her colleagues she went on hiking and ski tours, took part in a raft trip on the Main and visited the professors at home. The discussions that were held were apparently always dominated by physics.

In 1906 she did her doctorate with the physics Nobel laureate Wilhelm Wien , the successor of Röntgen at the institute, with her dissertation on the ratio of the energy of the X-rays to the energy of the generating cathode rays .

Back in the United States, she taught again at Vassar College . In 1912 she was appointed associate ( associate ) professor there, and in 1920 full ( full ) professor.

In 1911 she received the Sarah Berliner Fellowship , a research grant from the American Association of University Women , the largest association of scientifically active American women with a doctorate at the time. This scholarship was endowed with US $ 1000 for research purposes. The Sarah Berliner Fellowship was named after the mother of the sponsor Emil Berliner .

In the same year she returned to Germany, where she worked with Max von Laue , among others . With this and his wife she befriended. She also met again with her doctoral supervisor in Vienna. When her family settled in California, she followed suit and worked in the physics laboratory at Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena . Her work has been published in Germany and the United States. She became a member (fellow) of the American Physical Society .

Chairman Edna Carter (left) with Monica Healea (seated in the vehicle) outside Vassar College , Poughkeepsie , New York , 1930s

From 1919 to 1939 Carter was chairholder (chairman) of the Physics Institute of Vassar College , organized its construction and expansion, sought and selected the teaching staff and designed the Henry Sanders Laboratory of Physics . In 1939 she and Monica Healea (who later succeeded Carter's chair) made it possible for the emigrated German physical chemist Charlotte Houtermans to receive a one-year research grant at Vassar College as the basis for her scientific work in the USA. Houtermans and Carter, who already had correspondence in 1924 when Charlotte Houtermans first applied to Vassar College , were close friends, since Houtermans had already researched and taught at Vassar College in 1927/28 . In 1940 Edna Carter was conspiratorially informed by Max von Laue by postcard from Germany that Fritz Houtermans had "appeared" ( had been released from Gestapo custody) so that she could forward this message to his wife Charlotte Houtermans at Vassar College . Carter retired in 1941, but then managed and organized the Physics Department of Albertus Magnus College in New Haven , Connecticut , and taught there for two more years as a professor.

In 1943 and 1944 it was used in rocket research and development at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as part of the US participation in World War II . At the age of 73 she retired into private life. After the end of the war she traveled repeatedly to Germany, where she visited Max von Laue and his wife Magda until their death in 1960/61.

Carter's scientific focus was on research into X-rays and optical spectroscopy . Her hobby was oil painting .

She passed away at the age of 91.

Memberships

• American Physical Society
• Optical Society of America

Publications (excerpt)

• About the ratio of the energy of the X-rays to the energy of the generating cathode rays . Inaugural dissertation, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Königliche Universitätsdruckerei von H. Stürz, Würzburg 1906, OCLC 459105857
• with Arthur Scott King: A further study of metallic spectra produced in high vacua (= Contributions from the Mount Wilson Solar Observatory, no. 166 ). Carnegie Institution of Washington (ed.), Reprinted from the Astrophysical Journal , Vol.XLIX , 1919, Chicago 1919, OCLC 457912316
• The vacuum-spark spectra of the metals (= Contributions from the Mount Wilson Observatory. No. 219 ). Carnegie Institution of Washington (ed.), Reprinted from the Astrophysical Journal , Vol. LV, 1922, Chicago 1922, OCLC 26318784
• with Arthur Scott King: The electric-furnace spectra of yttrium, zirconium, and lanthanum (= Contributions from the Mount Wilson Observatory. no. 326 ). Carnegie Institution of Washington (ed.), Reprinted from the Astrophysical Journal , Vol.LXV , 1927, Chicago 1927, OCLC 26180531
• Mary Watson Whitney 1847-1921 . Vassar College, Department of Physics (Ed.), Poughkeepsie, New York State 1964, OCLC 1100476773

literature

• Physics at Vassar . Vassar College, Department of Physics (Ed.), Poughkeepsie, New York State 1964, OCLC 1100477505
• Reminiscences . Biography, 1970, OCLC 1100476775

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k} Monica Healea, Helen Lockwood, Barbara Swain: Edna Carter 1872–1963 . In: Collections, Memorial Minutes. Vassar College Libraries, at: vassar.edu
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Edna Carter . In: Physics Today . Volume 16, No. 8, 1963, p. 74, on: scitation.org
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Dr. Edna Carter, taught at Vassar - Ex Physics Professor died at 91 . In: The New York Times . May 16, 1963, p. 35 at: nytimes.com
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Misha Shifman: Standing Together In Troubled Times: Unpublished Letters Of Pauli, Einstein, Franck And Others . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey 2017, ISBN 978-981-3201-00-2 , p. 38.
5. ↑ Edna Carter: About the relationship between the energy of the X-rays and the energy of the cathode rays that produce them , inaugural dissertation, Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg, Königliche Universitätsdruckerei von H. Stürz, Würzburg 1906.
6. ^ CLF: The Sarah Berliner Fellowship . In: Science. Vol. 34, Issue 882, November 24, 1911, pp. 705-706.
7. ↑ Monica Healea, 93, Physicist and Artist . In: The New York Times. May 15, 1993, p. 26.
8. ↑ Monica Healea (* 1899/1900 in Uhrichsville , Ohio ; † 1993 in Rhinebeck , NY) was an American physicist and artist. She earned her BA and MA from Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr , Pennsylvania , and her PhD from Harvard University . From 1933 she worked at the Physics Institute of Vassar College and took over its chair in the successor of Edna Carter. She researched the interaction between electron beams and metal surfaces. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) she was involved in the development of the magnetron (high-frequency generator) as an energy source for an air navigation system during World War II . She later worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) when it was being prepared for nuclear physics . She retired in 1962, but worked for several years at Harvard University to study the atomic physics of the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere . After retiring into private life, she focused on abstract art and the interplay of acrylic paints and fabrics. She exhibited her works in New York State and New York City . She was a member of the Dutchess County Art Association and Mill Street Loft , an art education center in Poughkeepsie, NY.
9. ↑ Misha Shifman: Standing Together In Troubled Times: Unpublished Letters Of Pauli, Einstein, Franck And Others . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey 2017, ISBN 978-981-3201-00-2 , pp. 40-41.
10. ↑ Misha Shifman: Standing Together In Troubled Times: Unpublished Letters Of Pauli, Einstein, Franck And Others . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey 2017, ISBN 978-981-3201-00-2 , pp. 38, 75.
11. ^ Edoardo Amaldi : The Adventurous Life of Friedrich Georg Houtermans, Physicist (1903-1966) . Springer Science & Business Media, Berlin / New York 2012, ISBN 978-3-642-32854-1 , p. 45.
12. ↑ Misha Shifman: Physics In A Mad World . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey 2015, ISBN 978-981-4619-28-8 , pp. 47, 219.
13. ↑ Misha Shifman: Standing Together In Troubled Times: Unpublished Letters Of Pauli, Einstein, Franck And Others . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey 2017, ISBN 978-981-3201-00-2 , p. 76.