Ruby Payne-Scott

Ruby Payne-Scott
Payne-Scott as a student in the 1930s, possibly while she was studying at the University of Sydney (1929–1932)
Born	Ruby Violet Payne-Scott (1912-05-28)28 May 1912 Grafton, New South Wales, Australia
Died	25 May 1981(1981-05-25) (aged 68) Mortdale, New South Wales, Australia
Nationality	Australian
Alma mater	University of Sydney
Scientific career
Fields	Radio astronomy, radiophysics, Radio-frequency engineering

Ruby Violet Payne-Scott, BSc (Phys) MSc DipEd (Syd) (28 May 1912 – 25 May 1981) was an Australian pioneer in radiophysics and radio astronomy, and was the first female radio astronomer.

Early life and education

Payne-Scott was born on 28 May 1912 in Grafton, New South Wales, the daughter of Cyril Payne-Scott and his wife Amy (née Neale). She later moved to Sydney to live with her aunt. She attended the Penrith Public Primary School from 1921 to 1924. She attended the Cleveland-Street Girls' High School in Sydney from 1925 to 1926. She completed secondary schooling at Sydney Girls High School. Her school Leaving Certificate included honours in mathematics and botany.

She won two scholarships to undertake tertiary education at the University of Sydney, where she studied physics, chemistry, mathematics and botany. She completed a B.Sc. in Physics in 1933 — the third woman to graduate in Physics there — along with an M.Sc. in Physics in 1936 and a Diploma of Education in 1938.

Early career

In 1936 she conducted research with William H. Love at the Cancer Research Laboratory at the University of Sydney. They determined that the magnetism of the earth had little or no effect on the vital processes of beings living on the earth by cultivating chick embryos with no observable differences despite being in magnetic fields up to 5000 times as powerful as that of the earth. Some decades earlier it was a widely held belief that the earth's magnetic field produced extensive effects on human beings, and many people would sleep only with the head to the north and the body parallel to the magnetic meridian.

After her cancer research, she worked a short stint of a year and a term as a secondary school teacher at St Peter's Woodlands Grammar School from 1938 through 1939. But she soon joined AWA, a prominent electronics manufacturer and operator of two-way radio communications systems in Australia. Although she was hired as a librarian, her work quickly expanded to leading the measurements laboratory and performing electrical engineering research. She left AWA in August 1941, having grown displeased with their research environment.

Contributions to radar and radio astronomy

With Alec Little (middle) and "Chris" Christiansen at the Potts Hill Reservoir Division of Radiophysics field station in about 1948

Participants in the International Union of Radio Science conference at the University of Sydney (1952). Payne-Scott is in the front row.

On 18 August 1941, she joined the Radiophysics Laboratory of the Australian government's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, an event that marks the beginning of the zenith of her career. During World War II, she was engaged in top secret work investigating radar. She was considered the Australian expert on the detection of aircraft using Plan Position Indicator (PPI) displays; post-war in 1948 she published a comprehensive report on factors affecting visibility on PPI displays. She also made important contributions to prototype radar systems operating in the 25cm microwave band, which greatly improved on previous radars.

After World War II, as the focus of the Radiophysics Lab switched from developing radar systems to repurposing those same radar systems for scientific pursuits, she was one of a few setting the direction for the rest of the lab. Her expertise as both a physicist and an electrical engineer distinguished her among her colleagues, most of whom lacked a formal physics education. In October 1945, herself, Pawsey, and McCready wrote a letter to Nature documenting a connection between sunspots and increased radio emissions from the sun (published February 1946). In December 1945, she authored a summary of "all knowledge available and measurements taken" at the Radiophysics Lab, and suggested future research directions that "set the thinking" for the group. In February 1946, Payne-Scott, McCready, and Pawsey made use of the sea-cliff location of their observation sites to perform the first radio interferometry for astronomical observations, their observations confirming that intense radio 'bursts' originated from the sunspots themselves. Their paper was also the first suggestion of Fourier synthesis in radio astronomy, an idea that hinted at the field's future of aperture synthesis.

From 1946 to 1951, she focused on these 'burst' radio emissions from the sun. She is credited with discovering Type I and III bursts, and with gathering data that helped characterize types II and IV. As part of this work, together with Alec Little she designed and built a new 'swept-lobe' interferometer that could draw a map of solar radio emission strength and polarization once every second, and would automatically record to a movie camera whenever emissions reached a certain intensity.

Her scientific career ended abruptly in 1951 with her decision to resign to start a family, as there was no maternity leave at the time.

In August 1952 she had a brief return to radio astronomy as an attendee of the 10th International Union of Radio Science General Assembly at the University of Sydney.

Later she returned to work as a schoolteacher at Danebank School from 1963 to 1974.

Personal life

She was an atheist, a feminist and advocate for women's rights, and a sometime member of the Communist Party. As a result, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) was interested in Payne-Scott and had a substantial file on her activities, with some distortions.

She was a passionate bushwalker, a lover of cats, and also enjoyed knitting.

Family

Ruby Payne-Scott and William ("Bill") Holman Hall secretly married in 1944; at this time, the Commonwealth government had legislated for a marriage bar specifying that married woman could not hold a permanent position within the public service. She continued to work for CSIRO while secretly married until the regulations of the new CSIRO in 1949 raised the issue of her marriage. The following year, her treatment by CSIRO resulted in hostile written exchanges with Sir Ian Clunies Ross (Chairman of CSIRO) about the status of married women in the work place. She lost her permanent position in CSIRO. However, her salary was maintained at a level comparable to that of her male colleagues. In 1951, she resigned a few months before her son Peter was born; there was no maternity leave at this time.

She changed her name to Ruby Hall only after she left CSIRO. Ruby and Bill Hall had two children: Peter Gavin Hall, a mathematician working in theoretical statistics and probability theory, and Fiona Margaret Hall, one of Australia's more prominent artists, whose career is described by Julie Ewington in her 2005 book Fiona Hall.

Death and legacy

Ruby Payne-Scott died in Mortdale, New South Wales, 25 May 1981, three days short of her 69th birthday. She suffered from Alzheimer's disease in the last years of her life. In 2018 the New York Times wrote a belated obituary for her.

In 2008, CSIRO established the "Payne-Scott Award" intended "for researchers returning from family-related career breaks".

Danebank School, where she taught after her radio astronomy career, hosts an annual Ruby Payne-Scott Lecture "presented by outstanding women scientists in a variety of fields".

Professional roles

• Research fellow, Cancer Research Committee, University of Sydney, 1932–35
• Woodlands Church of England Grammar School Glenelg (Adelaide) 1938–1939.
• Engineer, AWA Ltd, 1939–41.
• Division of Radiophysics, CSIR (now CSIRO), 1941–51.
• Home duties 1951–63.
• Mathematics/science teacher, Danebank Church of England School, Sydney, 1963–74.

Publications

• "Moonlight on the Nepean". Nepean Times. Penrith, NSW: National Library of Australia. 29 December 1923. p. 4.
• Relative intensity of spectral lines in indium and gallium. Nature, 131 (1933), 365–366.
• (With W.H. Love) Tissue cultures exposed to the influence of a magnetic field. Nature, 137 (1936), 277.
• Notes on the use of photographic films as a means of measuring gamma ray dosage. Sydney. University. Cancer Research Committee. Journal., 7 (1936), 170–175.
• Payne-Scott, Ruby Violet (1936), The wave-length distribution of the acattered radiation in a medium traversed by a beam of x or gamma rays (M.Sc. thesis), University of Sydney
• The wavelength distribution of the scattered radiation in a medium traversed by a beam of X or gamma rays. British Journal of Radiology, N.S., 10 (1937), 850–870.
• (With A.L. Green) Superheterodyne tracking charts. II. A.W.A. Technical Review, 5 (1941), 251–274; Wireless Engineer, 19 (1942), 290–302.
• A note on the design of iron-cored coils at audio frequencies. A.W.A. Technical Review, 6 (1943), 91–96.
• Eight unpublished classified technical reports at the Division of Radiophyiscs during World War II including Pawsey and Payne-Scott from 1944 : Measurements of the noise level picked up by an S-band aerial. CSIR Radiophysics Laboratory Report, RP 209 (1944).
• Solar and cosmic radio frequency radiation; survey of knowledge available and measurements taken at Radiophysics Laboratory to Dec. 1, 1945. CSIR Radiophysics Laboratory Report SRP 501/27 (1945).
• (With J.L. Pawsey and L.L. McCready) Radio-frequency energy from the sun. Nature, 157 (1946), 158.
• 'A study of solar radio frequency radiation on several frequencies during the sunspot of July–August 1946. CSIR Radiophyscis Laboratory Report, RPL 9 (1947).
• McCready, L.L., J.L. Pawsey, and Ruby Payne-Scott. "Solar radiation at radio frequencies and its relation to sunspots." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences 190.1022 (1947): 357–375.
• (With D.E. Yabsley and J.G. Bolton) Relative times of arrival of bursts of solar noise on different radio frequencies. Nature, 160 (1947), 256.
• The visibility of small echoes on radar PPI displays. Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, 36 (1948), 180.
• Solar Noise Records taken during 1947 and 1948. CSIR Radiophysics Laboratory Report. RPL 30 (1948).
• (With L.L. McCready) Ionospheric effects noted during dawn observations on solar noise. Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity, 53 (1948), 429.
• Bursts of solar radiation at metre wavelengths. Australian Journal of Scientific Research (A), 2 (1949), 214.
• The noise-like character of solar radiation at metre wavelengths. Australian Journal of Scientific Research (A), 2 (1949), 228.
• Some characteristics of non-thermal solar radiation at metre wave-lengths. Journal of Geophysical Research, 55 (1950), 233. (In collection of papers 'Summary of Proceedings of Australian National Committee of Radio Science, URSI, Sydney, 16–20 January 1950)
• (With A.G. Little) The position and movement on the solar disk of sources of radiation at a frequency of 97 Mc/s. I. Equipment. Australian Journal of Scientific Research (A), 4 (1951), 489.
• (With A.G. Little) The positions and movement on the solar disk of sources of radiation at a frequency of 97 Mc/s II. Noise Storms. Australian Journal of Scientific Research (A), 4 (1951), 508.
• (With A.G. Little) The position and movement on the solar disk of sources of radiation at a frequency of 97 Mc/s. III. Outbursts. Aust. J. of Scientific Research A, 5 (1952), 32.

Further reading

• Goss, W.M. (Miller) & McGee, Richard; Under the Radar: The First Woman in Radio Astronomy: Ruby Payne-Scott. Springer, 2010 ISBN 978-3642031403
• Goss, W.M. (Miller); Making Waves: The Story of Ruby Payne-Scott: Australian Pioneer Radio Astronomer. Springer, 2013 ISBN 978-3642357510 (An abbreviated, partly re-written version of "Under the Radar " intended for a non-specialist reader)
• Halleck, Rebecca (29 August 2018). "Overlooked No More: Ruby Payne-Scott, Who Explored Space With Radio Waves". The New York Times. Retrieved 31 August 2018.

External links

• Payne-Scott, Ruby Violet (1912–1981) in The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in the Twentieth Century
• Goss and McGee, W.M. and R.X. (November 2009). Under the Radar The First Woman in Radio Astronomy, Rudy Payne-Scott. Springer. ISBN 9783642031410. Retrieved 12 February 2011.
• Home, R.W. (June 1995). "Payne-Scott (later Hall), Ruby Violet". Australian Science Archives Project. Retrieved 8 May 2007.
• 100th BirthDay Doodle for Ruby Payne-Scott on YouTube
• Williams, Robyn (February 2004). "Ruby Payne-Scott, Radio Astronomer". ABC Radio National, The Science Show transcript. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
• The Jodcast (August 2009). "The Jodcast Podcast, Aug 2009, featuring extended interview with Ms Payne-Scott's biographer Professor Miller Goss of NRAO". Jodrell Bank Observatory. Retrieved 9 August 2009.
• CSIROpedia (March 2011). "Ruby Payne-Scott [1912–1981]". CSIRO. Archived from the original on 1 September 2012. Retrieved 4 October 2012. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
• Solar Radio Burst Classifications with a description of Type I/II/III/IV bursts and sub-types