author
Harriet Brooks
A pioneering Canadian physicist, she helped uncover how radioactive elements change and recoil—work that shaped the early science of the atom. Her research was so impressive that Ernest Rutherford reportedly compared her scientific talent to Marie Curie’s.
1 Audiobook
The new gas from radium
by Ernest Rutherford, Harriet Brooks
About the author
Born in Exeter, Ontario, in 1876, Harriet Brooks became one of the first women to make a mark in the new field of nuclear physics. She studied at McGill University, where she earned a master’s degree in 1901 and carried out important early research on radioactivity.
Working with Ernest Rutherford, Brooks helped reveal that radioactive decay could transform one element into another, and she is also credited with discovering atomic recoil. She later worked with leading scientists in Europe and the United States, including J. J. Thomson and researchers at the Curie circle, building a reputation as a gifted experimental physicist.
Even with that promise, her scientific career was cut short, and she is often remembered as a brilliant pioneer whose achievements were not fully recognized in her lifetime. Today she is celebrated as Canada’s first female nuclear physicist and as an important figure in the early history of atomic science.