Paving the way for dorothy hodgkin and rosalind franklin. Three rare, early offprints by Kathleen Lonsdale, one of the first women elected to the Royal Society and the recipient of its Davy Medal for outstanding contributions to chemistry.

X-ray crystallography (measuring the diffraction of x-rays by the atoms in a molecule in order to determine its structure) was one of the key scientific techniques of the 20th century. Developed by the father and son team of William Henry and William Lawrence Bragg beginning around 1912, it would eventually be used to determine the structure of DNA. Lonsdale (then Yardley) became involved in the field when the elder Bragg offered her a research position on the completion of her physics degree in 1923, and under his supervision she studied organic compounds. Her first paper was published in the Philosophical Transactions in 1924. These three papers appeared in the Mineralogical Magazine in 1925 and 1926, making them particularly early not only in Lonsdale's career, but also in the history of x-ray crystallography, which was on the cusp of being perfected by J.D. Bernal's film camera technique.

'Lonsdale was strongly attracted to experimentation and considered the best work to be that work done alone. In 1929, she published a remarkable paper on the first aromatic compound to be examined by crystallography, hexamethylbenzene; the paper is considered to be a classic in the field' (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p804). She later studied diamonds and bladder stones and did important work with an international team preparing tables of crystal structures, eventually serving as chair of the newly established Commission on Tables for the International Union of Crystallography. She was the first woman president of both the International Union of Crystallography and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1956.

3 offprints; 8vo; in the original grey wrappers; fine condition.