Background
Joan Maie Freeman was born in Perth on 7 January 1918.
Joan Maie Freeman was born in Perth on 7 January 1918.
She completed her Intermediate Certificate Examination and earned a place at the University of Sydney in 1936. She received her Bachelor of Science in 1940 and was awarded a Commonwealth Research Scholarship to continue her Master of Science .
While still a girl, she took evening classes at Sydney Technical College. She took a position at the Radiophysics Laboratory of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research as a research officer in June 1941. She researched radar during World World War World War II After the war ended, Freeman engaged in research on the behaviour of low-pressure gas discharges at microwave frequencies.
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research then awarded her a Senior Studentship that allowed her to read for her Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge in England.
She attended Newnham College and later studied short-range alpha particles with Alex Baxter, working on the HT1 accelerator. In 1951 Freeman became Senior Scientific Officer at the Harwell Tandem Accelerator Group.
She later led the group and received the Rutherford Medal and Prize in 1976 with Roger Blin-Stoyle, for their research of the beta-radioactivity of complex nuclei. She received an honorary doctorate from Sydney University and fellowships from the Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society.
She retired in 1978. Freeman wrote the 1991 book A Passion for Physics.
She died in Oxford on 18 March 1998. Freeman married John Jelley in 1958.