Born: Unknown (1700s), United Kingdom (assumed)
Died: Unknown (1800s)
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
The following was written by Nina Baker and is excerpted from the book From Alchemy to Transport Phenomena: A Global History of Women in Chemical Engineering.
Other evidence of very early British women working in chemical engineering is often so scant that we can only guess as to how much was engineering and how much was chemistry. An early example is Elizabeth Fulhame, about whom distressingly few key details are known, but in 1794 she published her “Essay on Combustion”, from which it is now possible to credit her with describing the process of catalysis, albeit without that term. She did hundreds of experiments to try to find a way to dye cloth with gold or other metals and her work could now be categorised as industrial chemistry rather than chemical engineering.
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
Groundbreaking chemist Elizabeth Fulhame invented the concept of catalysis and discovered photoreduction. To avoid being “plagiarised,” she published her pioneering 1794 work, the culmination of 14 years of research, under the name “Mrs Fulhame.” When the book was published in the United States in 1810, her American editor noted in the introduction that her work was not as well-known as it should have been, as “the pride of science, revolted at the idea of being taught by a female.” Fulhame herself wrote, “But censure is perhaps inevitable: for some are so ignorant, that they grow sullen and silent, and are chilled with horror at the sight of anything that nears the semblance of learning, in whatever shape it may appear; and should be the spectre appear in the shape of a woman, the pangs which they suffer are truly dismal.”