28/01/2026
Today we remember the brilliant Dame Kathleen Lonsdale on her birthday (28 January 1903 – 1 April 1971).
Born here at Charlotte House, Lonsdale was a pioneering crystallographer, a committed pacifist, and a passionate prison-reform activist. In 1929, she proved that the benzene ring is flat using X-ray diffraction, and went on to break new ground by introducing Fourier spectral methods to crystal structure analysis.
Her career was marked by extraordinary firsts: one of the first two women elected Fellow of the Royal Society (1945), the first female professor at UCL, and the first woman to serve as president of both the International Union of Crystallography and the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
An amazing woman whose trailblazing spirit continues to inspire us here at NBC.
