Gertrude Bacon

Gertrude Bacon (19 April 1874 – 22 December 1949) was a British aeronautical pioneer. She achieved a considerable number of "firsts" for women in aeronautics, as well as making contributions in the areas of astronomy and botany. Bacon popularised aeronautics through her writing, and promoted both commercial and popular flying as fields for women.

Early life

Gertrude Bacon was born in 1874, one of the three children of Gertrude (née Myers) and John Mackenzie Bacon (19 June 1846 – 26 December 1904). In 1876, the family moved from Cambridge to Cold Ash near Newbury in Berkshire. In 1880 her mother's mental health became poor following the birth of another child. Her father was an astronomer, aeronaut, and scientist who was a private tutor for University of Cambridge. He educated his children at home although Bacon also was briefly educated at The Maynard School, in Exeter.

She became her father's scientific collaborator in both astronomy and aeronautics. She was an original member of the British Astronomical Association (BAA) attending the inaugural meeting in 1890, and a member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Astronomy

She accompanied her father on BAA solar eclipse expeditions to observe total solar eclipses in Vadsø in Finnmark, Norway (9 August 1896), Buxar in India (22 January 1898), and Wadesboro, North Carolina (28 May 1900). Their first was unsuccessful, due to cloudy weather, but the second and third expeditions were successful. Bacon took photographs at all three events, including motion pictures at Buxar. Those from North Carolina were to measure if light diminished and returned at the same rate during an eclipse. In 1921 she was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, following a proposal by the Astronomer Royal Frank Watson Dyson.