Isabelle Stone

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| name = Isabelle Stone

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| image = IsabelleStone1920.png

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| alt = An older white woman in academic robes and a mortarboard cap, from 1920 yearbook

| caption = Isabelle Stone, from a 1920 yearbook

| birth_date = October 18, 1868

| birth_place = Chicago, Illinois, US

| death_date = 1966

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| workplaces = Bryn Mawr School
Vassar College
Sweet Briar College

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| alma_mater = Wellesley College
University of Chicago

| thesis_title = On the Electrical Resistance of Thin Films

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| thesis_year = 1897

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Isabelle Stone (October 18, 1868 – 1966) was an American physicist and educator. She was one of the founders of the American Physical Society.{{cite book|author=Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LTSYePZvSXYC&q=isabelle+stone+physics&pg=PA1241|title=The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: L-Z|author2=Joy Dorothy Harvey|publisher=Taylor & Francis|year=2000|isbn=978-0415920407|volume=2|page=1241|author-link=Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie|author2-link=Joy Harvey|access-date=6 April 2014}} She was among the first women to earn a PhD in physics in the United States.

Early life and education

Stone was born in 1868 to Harriet H. Leonard Stone and Leander Stone in Chicago.{{cite book |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=6k5zd07FCCsC&q=isabelle+stone+physics&pg=PA186 |page= 186 |year= 1990 |title= Women in Science: Antiquity Through the Nineteenth Century |author= Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie |publisher= MIT Press |isbn=978-0262650380 |access-date= 6 April 2014}} She completed a bachelor's degree at Wellesley College in 1890, and was among the first women to earn a PhD in physics in the United States, earning hers just two years after Caroline Willard Baldwin earned a Doctor of Science at Cornell University.{{Cite book|last=Conable|first=Charlotte|title=Women at Cornell: The Myth of Equal Education|publisher=Cornell University Press|year=1977|isbn=0-8014-1098-3|location=Ithaca, New York|pages=86}} Stone completed doctoral work at the University of Chicago.{{cite book |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=6J5_iXvkD6EC&q=isabelle+stone+physics&pg=PA168 |title= Einstein's Generation: The Origins of the Relativity Revolution |year= 2008 |publisher= University of Chicago Press |page= 168 |isbn= 978-0226770574 |author= Richard Staley |access-date= 5 April 2014}} Her 1897 thesis, On the Electrical Resistance of Thin Films, showed that very thin metal films showed a higher resistivity than the bulk metal.{{cite book|author=John M. Ziman|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zTPhOr7cEDcC&q=isabelle+stone+physics&pg=PA176|title=The Physics of Metals, Volume 1|publisher=CUP Archive|year=1969|isbn=978-0521071062|page=176|access-date=6 April 2014}}

Career

Stone taught for a year at the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore. She was a physics instructor at Vassar College from 1898 to 1906,{{Cite web|last=Behrman|first=Joanna|title=American Women in Physics: Their Higher Education and Sites of Practice, 1870-1940|url=https://www.chstm.org/news/american-women-physics-their-higher-education-and-sites-practice-1870-1940|access-date=2021-03-15|website=Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine}} and head of the physics department at Sweet Briar College from 1915 to 1923.{{Cite book|last=Sweet Briar College|url=http://archive.org/details/briarpatch1920swee|title=The Briar Patch|date=1920|publisher=|pages=11|via=Internet Archive}} From 1908 to 1914, she and her sister Harriet Stone ran a school for American girls in Rome, and later in life they ran another school for girls in Washington, D.C.{{Cite book|last=Creese|first=Mary R. S.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=amtGAwAAQBAJ&q=%22Isabelle+Stone%22+physics&pg=PA214|title=Ladies in the Laboratory? American and British Women in Science, 1800-1900: A Survey of Their Contributions to Research|date=2000-01-01|publisher=Scarecrow Press|isbn=978-0-585-27684-7|pages=214|language=en}}

Stone was one of two women (out of a total of 836) to attend the first International Congress of Physics in Paris (the other being Marie Curie). In 1899, she was one of forty physicists (and one of two women, the other being Marcia Keith) at the first meeting of the American Physical Society, held at Columbia University.{{Cite journal|last=Darrow|first=K. K.|date=2009-01-22|title=n Equals One|url=https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.3066592|journal=Physics Today|language=en|volume=2|issue=8|pages=30–32|doi=10.1063/1.3066592|issn=0031-9228|url-access=subscription}}

Stone's research focused on the electrical resistance and other properties of thin films.

Publications

[https://hdl.handle.net/2027/njp.32101058260587 On the electrical resistance of thin films], January 1898, Physical Review, vol. VI, no. 30
[https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSeriesI.21.27 Color in Platinum Films], July 1905, Physical Review (Series I), vol. 21, Issue 1, pp. 27–40
Properties of thin films when deposited in a vacuum{{cite encyclopedia |title=Stone, Dr. Isabelle |encyclopedia=American Men of Science |page=455 |year=1910 |publisher=The Science Press |location=New York |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8toSAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA455}}

Personal life

Stone lived with her sister Harriet Stone in Washington, D.C. in her later years. Some of her letters are in the papers of George B. Pegram at Columbia University.