History - People - Dame Kathleen Lonsdale

Dame Kathleen Lonsdale (1903-1971) Tenure: Reader 1947- 1950 Professor 1950 - 1968 Professor Emeritus 1968 - 1971

Kathleen Lonsdale was an outstanding X-ray crystallographer. She is remembered particularly for her determination of the crystal structure of hexamethylbenzene, which showed it unequivocally to be hexagonal.

Kathleen Lonsdale was also the first woman to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (1948).

After the Chemistry Department moved out of the old Ramsay and Forster Laboratories in Gower Place, the building was renamed the Kathleen Lonsdale building and now houses the Department of Geology, parts of Physics, and the computer centre.

This page last modified 20 September, 2010