Person

Gall, Ruth Edna (1923 - 2017)

DSc

Born
8 November 1923
'Kroombit', Pennant Hills, New South Wales, Australia
Died
10 July 2017
late of The Terraces Aged Care, Varsity Lakes, Queenland, Australia
Occupation
Chemist
Alternative Names
  • Lack, Ruth Edna (Birth name)

Summary

Ruth Gall, born Lack, worked for the CSIRO conducting research into coal. Later at the University of Sydney, she undertook research into the fundamental chemistry of steroids and other compounds while holding a teaching fellowship in organic chemistry, and researching her PhD. In 1969 she became the first female appointed Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University.

The University of Sydney commemorates her life at the Ruth Gall Memorial Lecture, usually held each year on International Women's Day.

Skip to

Details

Chronology

1939 - 1945
Military service - Second World War. Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), on radar operations, Northern Queensland
c. 1946 - c. 1947
Career position - Studying under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme
c. 1947 - c. 1956
Career position - Researcher, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
c. 1956 - 1961
Career position - Teaching Fellowship, Department of Organic Chemistry, School of Chemistry, University of Sydney
1961
Education - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Sydney [under Charles Shoppee]
1962 - 1966
Career position - Lecturer, Organic Chemistry, School of Chemistry, University of Sydney
1966 - 1969
Career position - Senior Lecturer, Organic Chemistry, School of Chemistry, University of Sydney
1969 -
Career position - Associate Professor in Chemistry, University of Sydney
c. 1974
Career position - Head of School of Chemistry, University of Sydney

Colleague

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

  • McCarthy, Gavan; Morgan, Helen; Smith, Ailie; van den Bosch, Alan, Where are the Women in Australian Science?, Exhibition of the Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation, First published 2003 with lists updated regulary edn, Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, 2003, https://eoas.info/exhibitions/wisa/wisa.html. Details

Journal Articles

  • Allen, Nessy, 'Achievement in Science: the Careers of Two Australian Women Chemists [Ruth Edna Gall and Jean Youatt]', Historical Records of Australian Science, 10 (2) (1994), 129-141. https://doi.org/10.1071/HR9941020129. Details

Resources

See also

  • Hooker, Claire, Irresistible Forces: Australian Women in Science (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2004), 215 pp. Details

Rebecca Rigby; Ken McInnes

Created: 18 January 2012, Last modified: 14 February 2024

EOAS ID: biogs/P004918b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P004918b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260