Martha Annie Whiteley

Martha Annie Whiteley (11 November 1866 – 24 May 1956) was an English chemist, and one of the inventors of the tear gas used in the First World War. She is identified as one of the Royal Society of Chemistry's 175 Faces of Chemistry.

Biography

Whiteley was born in 1866 in Hammersmith, London, England, and pursued her education at Kensington High School, London – which was the first school belonging to the Girls' Public Day School Trust, providing affordable day school education for girls – and Royal Holloway College for Women (London), from where she graduated in 1890 with a BSc.

Whiteley achieved her doctorate in 1902 from the Royal College of Science (later part of Imperial College), working with Professor Sir William Tilden. Her dissertation was on the preparation and properties of amides and oximes. At the same time, she worked part-time as a science lecturer at St Gabriel's Training College in Camberwell, a college for female teachers. After completion of her doctorate, she was invited by Tilden to join the staff at the College of Science, and was one of only two female professional staff when the college merged with the newly formed Imperial College in 1907.

At the Rector's request, in 1912 Whiteley founded the Imperial College Women's Association.

Whiteley's life and works are described in a detailed chapter in the 2011 publication on European Women in Chemistry.

During World War One, she worked with Frances Micklethwait and 6 other female scientists in an experimental trench at Imperial College testing mustard gas and explosives.

An earlier biography by Mary R.S. Creese of the University of Kansas was published in 1997 in the American Chemical Society's Bulletin for the History of Chemistry, and references what appears to be an obituary published 40 years previously in the year after Whiteley's death.