Kathleen Lonsdale Photo: courtesy Smithsonian Institution
Blue plaque for Kathleen Lonsdale
Quaker scientist best known for work in crystallography commemorated
by Rebecca Hardy
16th April 2021
The Quaker scientist, peace campaigner and prison reformer Kathleen Lonsdale is the first of six women being recognised by the English Heritage blue plaque scheme this year.
According to the Library of the Society of Friends, Lonsdale is primarily known for her work in crystallography, and was one of the first two women to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1945. She had been imprisoned as a conscientious objector in the second world war, and also delivered the Swarthmore Lecture in 1953.
The plaque was unveiled on 1 April, the fiftieth anniversary of her death, at the house she lived in from 1911 to 1927: 19 Colenso Road, Seven Kings, London.
