Abstract
As the Cancer Research Committee closed its doors in the late 1930s, there was a scarcity of permanent teaching or research positions at the University of Sydney; Payne-Scott must have been concerned about her future. During the course of 1937, she applied for a position as Science Mistress at Woodlands Church of England Girls’ Grammar School1 in the sea-side suburb of Glenelg in Adelaide, South Australia. Payne-Scott completed the work for a Certificate of Education in 1937, and the University of Sydney awarded her the teaching certificate in 1938. Obtaining a teaching post during those Depression years must have been an asset. Positions for physicists were indeed limited, especially for women. Employment outside universities was rare for any physicist. Payne-Scott joined the staff at Woodlands at the beginning of the first term 1938 and remained until the end of first term 1939. Payne-Scott only stayed at Woodlands for a year and a term, resigning in May 1939. Not only did she move outside New South Wales for the first and only time in her life, but she also moved from a research environment (University of Sydney) to that of a secondary school. In the 1960s she returned to teaching at the Danebank School in Sydney (see Chap. 14). At Woodlands, Payne-Scott was a “boarding mistress”, living in the school together with the student boarders. This meant that the school provided her accommodation but with the added responsibilities of the supervision of pupils after school hours. Jocelyn “Jock” Pedler (née Britten-Jones, deceased 11 February 2009)2 from the class of 1939 was a boarder and remembered that Payne-Scott’s room was on a mostly enclosed balcony of the Law Smith building. This building is shown in 2007 in Fig. 3.1; the balconies were removed in the late 1930s. Although Jock Pedler was not especially interested in science, she was in the science club; she remembers that Payne-Scott was a reserved, serious teacher who suffered from poor eye-sight. Elizabeth Hallett (née Brookman) (see Fig. 3.2), remembers that Ruby was “dedicated to the sciences and was a patient and inspirational teacher as well as having a quiet and pleasant personality... I cannot help thinking that her spell at Woodlands could only have been a … low spot in her career but the fact that three of the girls in the photograph (Fig. 3.2) gained their B.Sc.’s could have given her some satisfaction”.3
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Notes
- 1.
See endnotes for a description of this historic school, now sharing the combined histories of two institutions in South Australia.
- 2.
Interview with Pedler, 23 March 2007 at the Archive Museum Woodlands Old Scholars’ Association Inc. in the conference room at the Law-Smith Building at St. Peter’s Woodlands Grammar School, South Australia. See endnotes.
- 3.
Letter from Elizabeth Brookman Hallett to Goss, 22 June 2007. Hallett has lived much of her life outside Australia, having married a well known Polish airman who had been in the Royal Air Force in the UK in World War II.
- 4.
Woodlands 1923–1973, 1973, pp. 52–53 in Chap. 4, “Problems and Changes”.
- 5.
Communication from Foy to Carolyn Little in 1999; communication to Dick McGee in June 2007.
- 6.
Green (1905–1951) was the Director of Research at AWA from 1941 to 1947. Green was a young ionospheric scientist who had been recruited by the Australian Radio Research Board by J.P.V. Madsen in the early 1930s, having finished a Ph.D. with Appleton at King’s College, London in 1934. In 1935, he joined AWA (Schedvin 1987). From 1947 to 1951 Green was in charge of the Ionospheric Prediction Service (see Chap. 9). Also see Chap. 13. At URSI in 1952 (Chap. 10), Appleton praised Green, who had died at the early age of only 46.
- 7.
Interview with Goss, Socorro, New Mexico, 12 May 1998.
- 8.
Letter to Goss, 22 March 1999. Noble also knew Bill Hall and Ruby in the Sydney Bush Walkers organization (Chap. 12).
- 9.
Ruby Payne-Scott and Alfred L. Green, 1941; the paper was later reprinted in Wireless Engineer.
- 10.
Letter to Goss. Undated letter, received in Socorro, New Mexico, 7 October 1997.
- 11.
See Chap. 4. Payne-Scott used McCready as a reference when she applied for the position at CSIR, RPL in August 1941.
- 12.
“Departing from their Sphere? Australian Women in Science, 1880–1960” in Xavier Pons (ed.), Departures: How Australia Reinvents Itself, 2002, p. 181.
- 13.
Payne-Scott and Freeman. Rachel Makinson worked at Sydney University, partially supported by RPL The total staff at this time was about 300 (Evans 1970).
- 14.
In the UK, women played major roles in the operation of the Chain Home radar stations (Rowe 1948). Rowe wrote: “All honour to the women who shared with the men the often primitive and isolated conditions at the radar stations and who carried on with their tasks when the stations were attacked by the enemy” (p. 27). In the Australian sphere, it is likely that all radar operators were men since many of the radar stations were in the war zone in the SWPA. Many of these men were trained in the “Bailey Boys” classes at the University of Sydney; most were in the Air Force although a few were from the Navy and Army (Fielder-Gill et al. 1999). By contrast, in New Zealand a number of the radar station personnel in the Royal New Zealand Air Force were women.
- 15.
As was Payne-Scott, Florence McKenzie (née Wallace) was a graduate of Sydney Girls’ High School. She was the first woman radio amateur (ham) in Australia.
- 16.
In Australian Women at War, 1984, p. 210 – another book with the same title as the Bayne volume.
- 17.
The name was invented by A.P. Rowe, the Superintendent of the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) in the UK.
- 18.
Another UK woman who worked at TRE was Elizabeth Palmer (letter from Sir F. Graham-Smith, 29 June 2007 to Sullivan). Graham-Smith was in the Test Gear section of the TRE, under the direction of J.A. Ratcliffe. His future wife, Elizabeth Palmer, was a Junior Scientific Officer from 1943 to 1945 in the Trainer Group working on simulators for training radar operators, similar to Payne-Scott’s experience in Sydney (Chap. 5). Graham-Smith and Elizabeth were married in 1945, just before returning to Cambridge University where he was to finish his B.Sc. degree. Elizabeth was a research assistant at the Cavendish Laboratory working on the radio solar patrol for Martin Ryle until 1947.
- 19.
Geyer was the Coordinator of the Group in 2007. Information was also provided in letters, emails and telephone conversations with Geyer in 2007 and 2008. Other members of the Archives Museum Group were Christine Ryan, Jocelyn Fuller, Anthea Smith and Margaret Steenvoorde.
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(2010). Woodlands School, AWA, New Career Opportunities for Women in World War II. In: Goss, W.M., McGee, R.X. (eds) Under the Radar. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 363. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03141-0_3
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