Agnes Pockels Biography

World of Chemistry on Agnes Pockels

Agnes Pockels was a self-taught physicist who conducted her experiments at home, publishing her findings in numerous papers over a 40-year period. Her pioneering work on surface films laid the foundation for future work in this field.

Pockels was born on February 14, 1862 in Brunswick, Germany to Captain Theodor Pockels and his wife. Her father's service in the Royal Austrian army required the family to move many times during her childhood, including an unfortunate post in a part of northern Italy with a high malaria infestation. This stay caused serious health problems for the whole family, which persisted for the rest of their lives. When, at age 41, Captain Pockels' illness forced an early discharg from the army, he returned with family to Brunswick in 1981.

Pockels excelled in all her classes at Municipal High School for Girls. She shared a love of the natural sciences with her younger brother Friedrich who went on to become a professor of physics. After graduation, Pockels remained at home since, women were not accepted for higher education at that time. When women were later admitted to higher education, her parents refused her request to apply. Struggling with her own frail health, she managed the household, assumed the care of her younger brother, Friedrich, until his marriage in 1900, and nursed both her father and mother until their deaths in 1906 and 1914. Despite these responsibilities, she remained dedicated to her role as caretaker writing in the diary she kept for most of her life, "Like a soldier, I stand firm at my post caring for my aged parents." This tenacious nature was evident as she pursued her education independently. She read whatever textbooks she could find, and launched a series of experiments that engaged her for half a century.

At 18, Pockels became fascinated with the effect films had on water. She performed her experiments mainly in the kitchen where she did household chores. In fact, some of her first observations made while washing dishes. "This is really true and no joke or poetic license" Pockels sister-in-law later wrote, "what millions of women see every day without pleasure and are anxious to clean away, i.e. the greasy washing-up water, encouraged this girl to make observations and eventual to . . . scientific investigation."

For the next 10 years, Pockels researched surfactants, substances that reduce surface tension when dissolved in an aqueous solution. She added salts to a solution, noted the resulting stream of currents, and measured the changes in the surface tension with a float attached to a balance placed on the liquid surface. In 1891 she sent a letter describing her work to Lord Rayleigh, an established researcher in the same field. Lord Rayleigh was so impressed with the quality and findings of her work, he had the translation from German to English published in the journal Nature in 1891.

Pockels received wide recognition for her contributions to the understanding of surface layers and surface films. The techniques she developed were used by physical chemists to define the physical properties of organic molecules before the advent of X-ray diffraction. Her methods of certifying a clean surface, essential in this type of work, were universally adopted as standard practice in this branch of physics. In 1931 she was awarded the Laura Leonard Prize for Quantitative Investigation of the Properties of Surface Layers an Surface Films and in 1932, she received an honorary doctorate from Carolina-Wilhelmina University in Brunswick, Germany. That same year, W. Ostwald published a tributary review of her remarkable work, stating that "every colleague who is now engaged on surface layer or film research will recognize that the foundations for the quantitative method in this field,...had been laid by (her) observations over 50 years ago."