Isabelle Stone: breaking the glass ceiling with thin films and teaching

Abstract

Physicist Isabelle Stone forged ahead in what was largely a men's profession in the early 1900s. She is credited as the first woman in the United States to obtain a Ph.D. in physics, one of the two women founders of the American Physical Society, and one of only two women to attend the first International Congress of Physics. Hers is the story of an unmarried, educated woman doing scientific research, living and working abroad, and providing educational stepping stones for more women to go to college. It starts with the electric resistance of thin films in Chicago and becomes a journey in teaching women up and down the east coast, across the Atlantic, and back again.