User:Karaskaggs/Fanny Gates

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Fanny Gates was an American physicist known for working with radioactive chemicals while contributing to the research and study of radioactivity. She spend many of her early years in school, and later becoming a professor of physics. She was awarded Dean of women at the University of Illinois, where she assembled the University's residence hall program. Additionally, Gates helped build the first cooperate house for female students at the University. A significant time in her career came from working with other largely known physicists, conducting experiments and making conclusions in the lab. Her researched proved radioactivity is from chemical reactions. Gates continued working as a physicist until her death.

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Personal Life

Fanny Gates was the daughter of John and Adelia John. She was one of five children- Howard, Burton, Alfred, and Gertrude Gates. She was born on April 26, 1872 in Waterloo, Iowa. She passed 58 years later on February 24, 1931 in Chicago, Illinois.

Career

Gates received three degrees throughout her career. She got her B.S. and M.A. from Northwestern University, and then finally her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1909. Gates played a crucial role in the field of mathematics and physics. She wrote her PhD on "The Conductivity of Gases Caused by Certain Chemical Changes." Furthermore, she published two papers during graduate school on the subject of radioactivity.

Gates received a President’s European Fellowship at Bryn Mawr College. Wanting to pursue her career in mathematics and physics, she attended the University of Göttingen in the fall of 1897. The following semester she studied at  Polytechnik Institute at Zurich. Gates returned to the United States in 1898 to accept a position at the Women's College of Baltimore (Goucher University), where her physics career took off. At Goucher, Gates built her lab to study spectra and X-rays. She remained at Goucher for 13 years, leaving in 1911 to work for the University of Chicago. From 1902-1903 she took a leave of absence from Goucher and worked with Ernest Rutherford and Harriet Brooks in Montreal at McGill University. She continued her research there on radioactivity, proving that radioactive phenomena were not simple chemical or physical processes. Her research continued to support her reputation in the science community. In 1905 she worked with J.J. Thomson, a well known physicist.

In 1911, Gates accepted a research position at the University of Chicago. Two years after that she was offered a professor of physics and Dean of Women position at Grinnell College in Iowa. She continued in this role for three years before moving to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1916, where she held the position of Associate Professor of Physics and Dean of Women for two years, and served on the policy and planning committee of the University.

Gates' exit from her position at the University of Illinois came with much controversy. Some say Gates was fired by the University for problems relating to drug use, while others argue that she faced a great deal of difficulty with the school administration.

After 1918, Gates transitioned to the private sector, where she assumed the role of General Secretary for the YMCA of New York, a position she held for two separate terms spanning from 1918 to 1919 and then from 1921 to 1922. Additionally, she shared her expertise by teaching at two private schools in New York and Bryn Mawr College. Following a brief tenure as a physics teacher at Roycenmore School in Evanson, Illinois, she retired from the field of education to focus exclusively on her research endeavors.

President James, when questioned about her departure from the University of Illinois, explained to the YMCA that "She did not like the limited scope for her activity which the office here presented and therefore was looking all the time for a wider field. She needs a wider opportunity for her abilities and energy.

Experiment with Quinine

Under the guidance of Ernest Rutherford in 1903, Gates conducted extensive research on quinine, a medication used to treat infectious diseases. She investigated both its phosphorescent and conductive charctertistics. She sought to discover weather these attributes were similarly exhibited by other radioactive substances. Building upon the prior work of Le Bon, her research entailed a series of designed experiments that examined the impacts of diverse tests on heated quinine samples. These experiments were then compared to established tests conducted on other radioactive materials, thus leading to the five conclusions listed below.


 * 1) Radiation from quinine is only apparent when accompanied by great temperature change, is inconsistent during the change, and ends shortly after the temperature change. Temperature change does not affect the rate of discharge of electricity between plates exposed to the radiations from the active elements, and the radiation from said plates does not deteriorate appreciably with time.
 * 2) Maximum ionization cannot be reached with quinine radiations even in a strong magnetic field, while a comparatively weak field will have this effect on radium and other active elements.
 * 3) Quinine radiations are largely absorbed in 2–3 mm of air, and can be absorbed far sooner than that, while even the least penetrating radiations from the active elements will pass through at least several cm of air with no appreciable loss in intensity.
 * 4) Quinine radiation can be completely blocked with a very thin sheet of aluminum. This does not affect the rays of uranium, radium, or thorium.
 * 5) While the rate of ionization due to radon radiation is independent of the direction of the field they are generated in, ionization from quinine radiation changes dramatically when the field is reversed.

Gates concluded with these observations that ionization from quinine radiation is different from that of other elements, resulting from molecular actions rather than the projection of charged masses from the atom.

Quinines Impact on Air Conductivity

In 1909, Gates researched and published her PhD thesis, a 12-page work, entitled "The Conductivity of Air Caused by Certain Chemical Changes", on the effect that heated quinine has on conductivity. In this paper Gates thoroughly researched the phenomenon where heating quinine raised the conductivity of the surrounding air in a series of controlled tests, expanding on her previous work in On the Nature of Certain Radiations From the Sulphate of Quinine. Gates eventually concluded that while quinine did indeed have the reported effect on air conductivity, several other compounds are present in the sulphate solution that the initial concept was based on, which would have a small interfering effect as the heating process progressed.

Gate's Contributions to Physics

The observations Gates made while working while examining the relationship between heat and radioactive materials with Ernest Rutherford and Harriet Brooks are listed below.


 * 1) Radioactivity cannot be destroyed by heat.
 * 2) Active particles are removed from wires at a temperature just below white heat, and are transferred unchanged to the surfaces of the cooler solids nearby.
 * 3) By removing the surrounding gas as fast as the wire is heated, a majority of radioactive particles can be carried off with it.
 * 4) The removal of the radioactivity from the wire is due to a volatilization of the radioactive material.

Death

Fanny Gates continued working until she passed on February 24, 1931 in Chicago. Her cause of death is unknown like many early scientists working in labs with radioactive materials. However, it has been written that Gates may have passed due to a radiation-related disease.