Frances Lowater

Frances Lowater (1871? - 1956) was a British-American physicist and astronomer. She studied in England for her undergraduate degrees, at University College, Nottingham, and Newnham College, Cambridge. She then moved to the United States, where she attended Bryn Mawr College and earned her Ph.D. in 1906. While studying for her Ph.D., she took a position as a physics demonstrator, and remained in that position until 1910. She spent a year at Westfield College and four years at Rockford College, then moved to Wellesley College, where she spent the rest of her career, absent a year teaching at the Western College for Women from 1910 to 1911.

Lowater's spectrographic research examined Mira, R Leonis, R Serpentis, and T Cephei and studied the absorption spectra of sulfur dioxide. Her research was conducted at the Yerkes Observatory. She was a fellow of both the Royal Astronomical Society and the London Physical Society, and helped write the third volume of the Physical Society's Report on Progress in Physics with Wilfrid Basil Mann; she was also elected a member of the Royal Institution. Lowater died in 1956.