Miriam Violet Griffith

Miriam Violet Griffith (11 October 1911 – 9 May 1989) was an electrical engineer, technical author and an early user of ground source heat pumps. She was an expert in the area of heat pumps and was elected a fellow of the Institute of Physics.

Early life
Miriam Violet Griffith was born on 11 October 1911 in Carlisle, England, eldest daughter of Sarah (née Pearce) and Rev. Leopold David Griffith. By 1921 she lived at The Rectory, Silvington, Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire with her parents, two sisters, one brother and a 15-year-old servant.

Education
She attended Casterton School in Carnforth from 1921 - 1927 and then Cheltenham Ladies College for her final years of secondary education. Griffith obtained a degree in Physics from Bedford College, University of London. She was made a Fellow of the institute of Physics prior to 1949.

Career
In 1935 Griffith was working at the British Electrical and Allied Industries Research Association Laboratories as a junior technical assistant and a colleague of Winifred Hackett. The same year she joined the Women's Engineering Society.

In 1948 she undertook research in heat pumps particularly ground-source heat pumps, considering impacts of a lower soil temperature on a kitchen garden. Robert C. Webber is credited as developing and building the first ground heat pump in the same year.

Griffith is recognised as being one of the first researchers in the field of ground-source heat pumps and coined the terminology Performance Energy Ratio (PER) to describe the system performance of a heat pump. When presenting her research in 1957 she proposed that PER was adopted as a common standard but there was some disagreement as an audience member commented that engineers are used "to thinking in terms of coefficient of performance" and as such the term did not persist.

Miriam Violet Griffith died on 9 May 1989.