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Agnes Pockels

Agnes Luise Wilhelmine Pockels (February 14 1862 in Venice, Italy, – 1935), was a German hausfrau and pioneer in chemistry.

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Biography

In 1862, she was born in Venice, Italy. Her father served in the Austrian army. (Note: In 1862, Venice, Italy, was under Austrian rule.) When he fell sick with malaria, the family moved to Brunswick, Lower Saxony in 1871. (Note: In 1871, Brunswick was part of the newly formed German Empire. Thus she was considered a German chemist. Now Brunswick is still part of Germany.) Already as a child, Agnes was interested in science and would have liked to study physics. In those days, however, women had no access to universities. It was only through her younger brother Friedrich Carl Alwin Pockels, who then studied at the famous university of Göttingen, that she gained access to scientific literature. (Note: Her younger brother, Friedrich Carl Alwin Pockels was also a famous scientist by himself; he is known for the Pockels effect.)

Legend has it that doing the dishes in her own kitchen Agnes discovered the influence of impurities on the surface tension of fluids. To measure the tension she developed the Pockels trough, precursor to the Langmuir scale, and published the first stearine acid.

In 1891, with the help of Lord Rayleigh, she managed to publish her first paper "Surface Tension" in the prestigious journal "Nature". (Please see reference.) In 1931 she received, together with Henri Devaux, the Laura Leonard award from the Colloid Society. In the following year (1932) the Technische Hochschule Braunschweig granted her an honorary PhD degree.

For her whole life, she did not have a formal appointment such that she was just an amateur scientist. She did not marry and remained single for her whole life.

References

Agnes Pockels, “Surface tension”, Nature, vol. 43, pp. 437-439 (1891).
M. Elizabeth Derrick, "Agnes Pockels, 1862-1935", Journal of Chemical Education, vol. 59, no. 12, pp. 1030-1031 (Dec. 1982).