Harriet Brook Essay

Harriet Brooks was born on January 1, 1876 in Exeter, Ontario, Canada. She attended McGill University where she earned her bachelor’s degree in natural philosophy and mathematics in 1898. After graduating, Brooks began working with a research team headed by Ernest Rutherford at Mcgill (Hicks). She started working with electricity and magnetism for two years. She also was a tutor at Royal Victoria College. Brook’s interest in the sciences influenced her to get a master’s degree in physics in 1901, making her the first woman to receive a master’s degree at McGill University (Rayner-Canham). While getting her master’s degree, Brooks began working with radium, which had only been discovered a few years prior in 1898. After researching the emanation
She studied the decay and documented how the process depended on “how long the element was exposed to emanations” (Hicks). In the process, she figured the curve of decay for short exposures and that radioactivity could transfer between surfaces. Because of her findings, she learned that radon could change into other elements and diffuse into air and other gases. Rutherford, unlike many scientists ideas, believed elements “went through more than one change during radioactive decay” (Hicks). Brook’s discovery made this claim of his evident that it was a “chain process.” Rutherford Hayes used this discovery during his Bakerian Lecture in 1904, when explaining the reaction of radioactive elements during decay (Rayner-Canham).
Harriet Brooks briefly worked with Marie Curie. Moreover, Harriet Brooks’s career included with the study of uranium. This was mainly due to Rutherford’s discovery of uranium giving off emanations. Brook’s research in this field led to her discovery that the elements in the periodic table “could change when their radioactivity was released.” This finding proved many scientists, who assumed otherwise, wrong