course a hoax. In 1907 she urged them to go to the lab to study again the
lives of certain chemists. They found large boxes of lovely chocolates ...
with a different life-history and picture of some famous chemist in each. In
my year we were requested to go and make a further study of the ‘Periodic
Table of the Elements.’ We found a very large board with the Table set out.
The divisions across and down were made with Edinburgh Rock, numbers
were made of chocolate, and the elements were iced cakes each showing its
name and atomic weight in icing. The nonvalent atoms were round,
univalent had a protruding corner, bivalent two, trivalent triangular and so
on. We divided it up between us!”
“Miss Freund’s invitation to the Periodic Table read: ‘Your attention is
drawn to the desirability - in fact the necessity of perfecting your knowledge
of the Periodic System of Classification of the Elements. Whether
considered from the point of view of theoretical or of descriptive and
classifactory chemistry, Mendeléev’s system demands extensive and detailed
knowledge, and such time as you can still give to revising (= cramming??)
chemistry might, it is suggested, be advantageously spent on this subject.
Since however it has always been recognised that a well-arranged and well-
spaced out table which allows one to take in at a glance as many facts and
relationships as possible, is a desideratum in this matter, you will find at the
laboratory such a table provided for your use. This table, whilst in the main
following the usual lines, tries to bring out, by means of a tentative
symbolism, more facts than it is usual to try and convey. Whether however it
is of a kind that would lend itself to extended use as an adjunct to the study
of chemistry must be considered doubtful’.”
Another Newnham student reminisces about her tutor, Freund, who had lost
a leg as a result of a cycling accident in her youth: “Miss Freund was a terror
to the first-year student, with her sharp rebukes for thoughtless mistakes.
One grew to love her as time went on, though we laughed at her emphatic
and odd use of English. Yet, how brave she was trundling her crippled and, I
am sure, often painful body about in her invalid chair smiling, urging,
scolding us along to ‘zat goal to which we are all travelling which is ze
Tripos’ ”(8).
A leading light
Only a brave minority of university-educated women went on to pursue
careers, particularly in teaching. Several teachers were former students at
Newnham (9) and they in turn encouraged their pupils to study at Newnham.
One such pupil was Mary Beatrice Thomas, who co-edited the Ida Freund
textbook, and another was Ida Smedley MacLean (1877-1944), who became
a research scientist at the Lister Institute of Preventative Medicine.
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Ida Freund was also an active feminist and supporter of women’s suffrage.
Together with Ida Smedley and Martha Annie Whiteley (1866-1956), a
lecturer at the Royal College of Science, she was a leading light among the
women who fought for admission to the Chemical Society in the early 1900s
(10). Sadly, Ida Freund did not live to see her friend’s victory in gaining
admission to the Chemical Society in 1920. She died in 1914 following an
operation and the Ida Freund Memorial Fund was set up to raise the standard
of women teachers in the physical sciences by giving them opportunities for
further study. The fund still exists today.
Examination of Ida Freund’s textbooks and personal testimonies from
students, together with her campaign for the acceptance of women in
chemistry on equal terms, suggests that she did have an influence on
chemistry teaching in the early twentieth century. The outward ripple effect
of pioneer women teachers, including Ida Freund, has spread through
successive generations of students and teachers, and inspired girls to study
chemistry. Today women comprise about half of all undergraduate chemistry
students.
Acknowledgements: we thank the Principal and Archivist of Newnham
College for their help.
References
1 M. and G. Rayner-Canham, Women in chemistry. (Philadelphia:
Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2001).
2 A. Hutchinson and M. B. Thomas, editors’ preface to I. Freund, The
experimental basis of chemistry. (Cambridge: CUP, 1920).
3 I. Freund, Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie, 1909, 66, 555.
4 I. Freund, The study of chemical composition: an account of its method
and historical development with illustrative quotations. (Cambridge:
CUP, 1904).
5 O.T. Benfry, biographical essay in I. Freund, The study of chemical
composition. (New York: Dover Publications, 1968).
6 I. Freund, The experimental basis of chemistry. A. Hutchinson and M. B.
Thomas (eds). (Cambridge: CUP, 1920).
7 G. Fowles, Lecture experiments in chemistry, sixth edn. (London: G. Bell
and Sons, 1963).
8 A. Phillips (ed), A Newnham anthology. (Cambridge: CUP, 1979).
9 M. R. S. Creese, Br. J. Hist. Sci., 1991. 24, 275.
10 J. Mason, Chem. Br., 1991, 27, 233.
Margaret Hill and Alan Dronsfield
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