Fanny Cook Gates was an American physicist, an American Physical Society fellow and American Mathematical Society member.
Education
In 1895, and finally her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1909. In the fall of 1897 she attended the University of Gottingen to further her studies in mathematics and physics. And in the winter of 1898, furthered her studies at the Polytechnik Institute at Zurich.
Career
She made contributions to the research of radioactive materials, determining that radioactivity could not be destroyed by heat or ionization due to chemical reactions, and that radioactive materials differ from phosphorescent materials both qualitatively and quantitatively. Gates received her Bachelor of Surgery from Northwestern University in 1894 and her Master of Arts She published two papers during graduate school on the subject of radioactivity. From 1895-1897, she was a scholar and fellow in mathematics at Bryn Mawr College, where she received a President"s European Fellowship.
Gates returned to the United States. in 1898 to accept a position at the Women"s College of Baltimore (Goucher University), where she ordered in advance of her arrival, additional physics equipment to build her lab to study spectra and X-rays.
She remained at Goucher for 13 years. From 1902-1903 she worked with Ernest Rutherford at McGill University, Montreal, where her research on radioactivity continued, proving that radioactive phenomena were not simple chemical or physical processes.
In 1905, Gates worked with Josip Juraj Thomson, her research continued to support her reputation in the scientific community. In 1911, she left her position at Goucher in Baltimore to accept a research position at the University of Chicago.
Two years after that she was offered a Professor of Physics and Dean of Women position at Grinnell College in Iowa.
She continued in this role for three years before moving to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1916, where she held the position of Associate Professor of Physics and Dean of Women, and served on the policy and planning committee of the university. Fanny Gates continued to work until her passing in Chicago on February 24, 1931. While the cause of her death was either undetermined or unreported, like many early scientists working with radioactive materials, it has been written that her death may have been due to a radiation-related disease.