SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING GROUP 2017 18 PROGRAMME - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING GROUP 2017 – 18 PROGRAMME

‘LADIES WITH LAMPS’

The life and times of; FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE & KATHERINE BLODGETT Presentation by Jill Turner, 11th October 2017

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE – OUTLINE BIOGRAPHY

• Born ‐ 12 May 1820; Florence in Tuscany
• Died ‐ 13 August 1910 ; Park Lane, London
• Known for pioneering modern nursing
• Most notable awards;

Royal Red Cross(1883) Lady of Grace of the Order of St John ( LGStJ) Order of Merit (1907)

MAIN ACHIEVEMENTS

• The founder of modern nursing ‐ Crimean War; “ The Lady with the Lamp" and

the icon of Victorian culture

• English social reformer,
• Statistician,
• Writer – dissemination of medical knowledge ( plain English ) and posthumously
• n religious & mystical themes

.

FAMILY BACKGROUND

• Family ‐ rich, upper‐class and well‐connected
• Father – William Edward Nightingale, born William Edward Shore (1794–

1874)

• Mother ‐Frances ("Fanny") Nightingale née Smith (1789–1880)
• Maternal grandfather – abolitionist and Unitarian William Smith
• 1821 ‐ family returned to England, Florence grew up in family homes at

Embley, Hampshire and Lea Hurst, Derbyshire

NURSING CONTRIBUTION

• Topic of debate ‐ questioning of Nightingale’s contribution
• ? Media exaggeration – need for a hero figure
• Unquestioningly the founder of modern professional nursing
• Established the nursing school at St Thomas Hospital ‐the world’s first

secular nursing school

• Nightingale pledge – taken by all new nurses
• Florence Nightingale Medal – highest international nursing

distinction

• International Nursing Day – 12th May

EARLY LIFE

• Taught by father
• 1838 ‐ family toured Europe. Met English‐born Parisian hostess Mary

Clarke ‐ became friend and role model of female equality

• Religious ‘experience’ – felt called to serve others
• Family resistance to nursing as a career for women of her social status
• FN delayed announcing her intentions to nurse until 1844
• Poet Richard Monckton Milnes ‐ 9 year courtship but she declined
• ffer of marriage devoting herself instead to nursing
• 1847 Rome ‐ met politician Sidney Herbert, Secretary at War 1845–

1846 and again in the Crimean War

FORMATIVE YEARS

• Travels including Greece , Egypt and Lutheran community at

Kaiserswerth‐am–Rhein (Germany ) where FN witnessed care of the sick and deprived

• Turning point ‐ 1851; The Institution of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, for

the Practical Training of Deaconesses, etc. as her first published work

• 4 months of medical training at the Institute
• 22 August 1853‐ October 1854 , post of superintendent at the

Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Upper Harley Street, London

SOCIAL AND HEALTHCARE REFORMS

• Social reforms and improvements in healthcare; all sections of British

society,

• Advocated better hunger relief in India,
• Helped to abolish prostitution laws that were over‐harsh to women,
• Expanded the acceptable forms of female participation in the

workforce

THE CRIMEAN WAR – 1

• F.N. concerns at reports of poor conditions for wounded soldiers led

her to mobilise support and an expedition of 38 trained nurses to Selimiye Barracks in Scutari ( now Istanbul) November 1854

• F.N. wrote to The Times requesting government support.
• I.K. Brunel designed a pre‐ fabricated hospital ( civilian ) Renkioi

Hospital . Death rate less than 10% of Scutari

• F.N. Instituted strict hygiene methods ( including handwashing).
• Stephen Paget ( Dictionary of National Biography ) praised the

reduction in the death rate from 42% to 2%

THE CRIMEAN WAR – 2

• During the first winter at Scutari, 4,077 soldiers died.
• Ten times more soldiers died from illnesses ( eg typhus, typhoid , cholera

and dysentery ) than from battle wounds.

• The Sanitary Commission was sent to Crimea ( March 1855) –

improvements in sanitation etc were followed by reduced death rates.

• Some 20th century debate ref F.N.’s contribution although she did not

actually claim credit for reductions in deaths.

• F.N. belief in the wider impact of living conditions on death rates (poor

sanitation, over work) resulted in her later peace time work on housing.

The Lady with the lamp . Popular lithograph reproduction of a painting of Nightingale by Henrietta Rae, 1891

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Florence_Nightingale._Coloured_lithograph._Wellcome_V0006579.jpg)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ‐ 1857 poem "Santa Filomena": ‘…Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room…’

LATER CAREER - 1

• 29 November 1855 ‐ Nightingale Fund established. Duke of Cambridge as

Chairman

• ‘Medical tourism’ concept attributed to F.N. – ref 1856 letters directing

treatment of patients in spas in the Ottoman Empire ; cheaper than in Switzerland

• Nightingale Training School – St Thomas’ Hospital; 9 July 1860.
• Now ‐ the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery at King’s

College London

• ‘Notes on Nursing’ (1859) ‐ cornerstone of the curriculum promoting basic

rules of hygiene as ‘………… the knowledge which every one ought to have – distinct from medical knowledge, which only a profession can have“.

LATER CAREER – 2

• Major achievement ‐ the introduction of trained nurses into the

workhouse system in Britain from the 1860s

• Hitherto nurses were untrained. Ref. Dickens ‐ Mrs Gamp ( Martin

Chuzzlewit ) – untrained and incompetent

• F.N.s work inspired nurses in the American Civil War and the U.S.

Sanitary Commission

• F.N. mentored Linda Richards ‐ "America's first trained nurse"

AWARDS AND HONOURS

• 1883 – awarded the Royal Red Cross by Queen Victoria.
• 1904 ‐ appointed a Lady of Grace of the Order of St John.
• 1907 ‐ became the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit.
• 1908 ‐ given the Honorary Freedom of the City of London.
• Birthday is now celebrated as International CFS Awareness Day

FINAL YEARS

• Periods of ill health
• 13th August 1910 died in Mayfair ‐ 90 years old
• Family declined Westminster Abbey burial
• Grave at St Margaret’s Church, East Wellow, Hampshire
• Carrara marble by Francis William Sargant in 1913 in the cloister of

the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence

OTHER ACHIEVEMENTS - 1

Statistics

• Gifted mathematician.
• Pioneered the visual representation of information – Polar area

diagram / ‘Nightingale rose diagram ( pie chart )

• First female member of the Royal Statistical Society
• Honorary member of the American Statistical Association

Sanitary reform

• England and India

OTHER ACHIEVEMENTS - 2

Feminist writings

• Over 200 books, pamphlets and articles
• Rejected the over feminisation of women into near helplessness

Theology

• Believed that genuine religion should manifest in active care and love for
• thers
• Often critical of organised religion

Other

• “What cruel mistakes are sometimes made by benevolent men and women

in matters of business about which they can know nothing and think they know a great deal."

FURTHER READING

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale
• http://www.florence‐

nightingale.co.uk/resources/biography/?v=79cba1185463

• https://beta.sciencemuseum.org.uk/stories/2016/11/4/florence‐

nightingalethe‐pioneer‐statistician

KATHERINE BLODGETT

Scanned from Hall of History News, Vol 10, No 3, Spring 1992, Schenectady, NY.

KATHERINE BURR BLODGETT

• Born 10th January 1898 Schenectady, New York
• Father ‐ George Reddington Blodgett (1862‐1897). Head of the

patent department at GE. Murdered shortly before she was born ( shot by a burglar )

• Mother Katharine Buchanan (nee Burr) Blodgett (ca 1865 ‐ ? )
• Katherine ( Katie ) died 12th October 1979 also at Schenectady

EARLY STUDIES

• Scholarship at 15 years to Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania.
• B.A. degree in physics and met Irving Langmuir
• M.S. degree; University of Chicago ‐ adsorption capacities of charcoal

in gas masks

• 1918 hired as Langmuir’s research assistant; the 1st woman scientist

to join the GE research laboratory

IRVING LANGMUIR

• Irving Langmuir (1881–1957)
• Graduated from Columbia University’s School of Mines
• Doctorate under the physical chemist Walther Nernst at University of

Göttingen, Germany ( frontiers of physical chemistry)

• 1909 – to the recently established General Electric (GE) Research

Laboratory in Schenectady

IRVINE LANGMUIR

• Problems with new tungsten filament light bulbs
• Langmuir examined the basic scientific processes; the chemical

reactions catalyzed by the hot tungsten filament

• Filled the bulbs with nitrogen ( later argon) & twisted the filament

into a spiral to inhibit vaporization of tungsten

LANGMUIR – NOBEL PRIZE

• Main focus of study ‐ chemical forces at the interfaces between

different substances

• Location of many biologically and technologically important reactions
• New concept of adsorption— adhesion of atoms or molecules to a

surface

• Key discovery – the layer of adsorbate ( atoms or molecules

accumulated at the surface of the adsorbent) is only one molecule thick—a monolayer, or monomolecular film.

BLODGETT – LANGMUIR COLLABORATION -1

• 1918 Langmuir produced oily monomolecular films on water
• Origins of the Langmuir‐Blodgett trough and part of the work that

later earned him the Nobel Prize 1932. (Nobel Laureate in Chemistry )

• 6 years collaboration – Langmuir arranged for Blodgett to become

doctoral student of Ernest Rutherford ‐ Cavendish Laboratory ( 1924 )

• 1st woman to achieve a doctoral degree in physics from Cambridge
• Blodgett returned to GE – 1st woman scientist with a doctorate at GE
• Ongoing collaboration – further improvements to the light bulb

BLODGETT – LANGMUIR COLLABORATION - 2

• Joint studies of electrical discharges in gases
• Foundations for “plasma” physics
• Similar to a gas in which a portion of the particles are electrically

charged

• The fourth state of matter, different from solid, liquid, and gas
• Joint work on thicker films – monolayers
• 1939 ‐ Blodgett invented non ‐reflecting glass (building up a 44‐

molecule‐thick film of barium stearate, a type of soap, on glass ‐ practical application of films )

BLODGETT – LANGMUIR COLLABORATION - 3

• Further development of this concept by other researchers‐ hard‐

coating films that adhered permanently on the glass surface.

• Now most lenses have nonreflective coatings for efficient passage of

light

• World War II ‐ further collaboration to develop methods for de‐icing

aircraft wings and protective smoke screens and saving many lives by covering troops thereby protecting them from exposure to toxic smoke.

BLODGETT – LANGMUIR COLLABORATION - 4

• Langmuir and Blodgett collaborated at the nanometer scale, studying

films that were just one molecule thick

• Langmuir received a Nobel Prize for his research
• Blodgett was awarded the Francis P. Garvin Medal from the American

Chemical Society

• 1st woman to receive the Photographic Society of America Award

OTHER ACHIEVEMENTS – 1

• "The invention of the 'colour gauge,’ ‐ film measurement within one

micro inch, began with Dr. Blodgett's December 1933 discovery that monomolecular layers of stearic acid, (one ten‐millionth of an inch in thickness) could be successively deposited on to a plate

• Ordinary glass is visible because of the light rays which are reflected

from its surface

• Blodgett discovered that reflection from (soap ) film neutralizes the

reflection from the glass; crests and troughs of the two sets of light waves cancel each other, thereby eliminating reflected light.

• December 1938 ‐ GEC announced that Katharine Blodgett had

succeeded in developing a non reflecting 'invisible' glass

OTHER ACHIEVEMENTS - 2

• Further research ‐ development of harder coatings which could not

be wiped off.

• Some applications of the invention are seen in car windscreens,

shop windows, showcases, cameras, spectacles, telescopes, picture frames, and submarine periscopes...."

OTHER ACHIEVEMENTS – 3

• U. S. Patents Issued to Katharine Blodgett

‐ Patent No. ‐ Date ‐ Description 1) 2,220,860 ‐ Nov 05, 1940 ‐ Film structure and method of preparation 2) 2,220,861 ‐ Nov 05, 1940 ‐ Reduction of surface reflection 3) 2,220,862 ‐ Nov 05, 1940 ‐ Low‐reflectance glass 4) 2,493,745 ‐ Jan 10, 1950 ‐ Method of making electrical indicators of mechanical expansion (with Vincent J. Schaefer) 5) 2,587,282 ‐ Feb 26, 1952 ‐ Step gauge for measuring thickness of thin films 6) 2,589,983 ‐ Mar 18, 1952 ‐ Electrical indicator of mechanical expansion (with Vincent J. Schaefer) 7) 2,597,562 ‐ May 20, 1952 ‐ Electrically conducting layer 8) 2,636,832 ‐ Apr 28, 1953 ‐ Method of forming semiconducting layers on glass and article formed thereby

• Canadian Patents Issued to Katharine Blodgett

‐ Patent No. ‐ Date ‐ Description 1) 404,963 ‐ May 26, 1942 ‐ Surface reflection reducing method 2) 405,126 ‐ Jun 02, 1942 ‐ Low refractance glass

FURTHER READING

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Burr_Blodgett
• https://www.famousscientists.org/katharine‐burr‐blodgett/
• http://www.aps.org/educ/cswp/events.cfm
• http://www.longislandgenealogy.com/maltby/fam00594.htm
• https://www.chemheritage.org/historical‐profile/irving‐langmuir‐and‐katharine‐burr‐

blodgett

• Published article (microfilm ‐ New York Public Library), "A method of measuring the

mean free path of electrons in > ionized mercury vapour," The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Vol. IV, Seventh Series, No. XX, July 1927, pages 165‐‐193. The paper was communicated by Sir E. Rutherford. A footnote indicates that she was a Research Student of Newnham College, and in the article's conclusion she expresses her thanks to Sir Ernest Rutherford and to Mr. Stead.

LADIES AND LAMPS

• One name continues to shine beyond her time and profession
• The other – ‘the invisible woman’