AYRTON, HERTHA (1854-1923), English scientist, was born at Portsea, April 25 1854, the daughter of Levi Marks, a clockmaker and jeweller, and was brought up in London by her aunt, Mrs. Alphonse Hartog. At her aunt's house she met Ma dame Bodichon, one of the founders of Girton College, who intro duced her to George Eliot and many distinguished people. She went up to Girton in 1876, and when she returned studied science in London, and married (May 6 1885) Prof. W. E. Ayr ton, whose pupil she had been.
The work on the electric arc, which made her famous, began in 1883. She read various papers on the subject before learned societies, and her book, The Electric Arc, appeared in 1902. In 1903 Prof. Ayrton was asked by the Admiralty to elucidate some of the problems connected with the electric searchlight. The four reports sent in (1904-08) were largely, and the last one entirely, the work of Mrs. Ayrton. She continued to work on the problem after her husband's death in 1908, continuing at the same time her researches on ripple-forming vortices in water. Her discoveries in this connexion she utilized practically in the invention of the Ayrton anti-gas fan, for the repulsion of noxious gases in war. The first instalment of these fans was sent out to the front in France in May 1916. She was then asked by the War Office to investigate the ventilation of gun emplacements. Up to the end of her life she was experimenting with the transmission of coal gas to obviate the necessity of separate gas-works in each district. She died Aug. 26 1923.
Mrs. Ayrton was a militant suffragist before the World War. She had a host of friends in London and Paris; James Darme steter was an intimate friend of hers before her marriage, and she had a lifelong friendship with Mme. Curie.
See Evelyn Sharp, Hcrtha Ayrton (1926).