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Sarah Frances Whiting and the “photography of the invisible”

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DOI: 10.1063/PT.3.4545

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Sarah Frances Whiting and the “photography of the invisible”
John S. Cameron, and Jacqueline Marie Musacchio

Citation: Physics Today 73, 8, 26 (2020); doi: 10.1063/PT.3.4545

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Published by the American Institute of Physics
Sarah Frances Whiting

An x ray taken by Sarah Frances Whiting in 1896, showing

eyeglasses in a leather case and a pincushion filled
with pins. (Courtesy of Wellesley College.)

26 PHYSICS TODAY | AUGUST 2020

 John S. Cameron is an emeritus professor of biological
sciences and Jacqueline Marie Musacchio is a professor
of art history at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

A team of women working

in the physics laboratory at
Wellesley College carried out
some of the first successful
x-ray experiments in the US.

I n February 1896 Sarah Frances Whiting, founder of the physics and astronomy departments
at Wellesley College, conducted a series of x-ray experiments. She was working only a
few weeks after the public announcement of Wilhelm Röntgen’s discovery of the rays,
and she was not alone; amateur and professional scientists at colleges, universities, and
medical centers across the US were attempting to replicate and extend Röntgen’s results.
But Whiting (see figure 1), who enlisted the assistance of a Wellesley colleague and several students,
was among the first to do so successfully. Even more importantly, Whiting was the first woman—and
almost certainly the first person, male or female—to do so in an undergraduate laboratory. Her original
glass plates from the experiments do not survive, but 15 photographs printed from them (see the opening
image of one such photo) were recently rediscovered in a campus building slated for demolition. They
provide a vivid reminder of Whiting’s success.
The x-ray experiments were only one instance in which faculty with the same opportunities available to men.1 Finding
Whiting drew on her keen engagement with contemporary sci- faculty, however, was a challenge. With few exceptions, the first
entific advances to offer her students an experience available generations of Wellesley faculty were female, single, and char-
to few undergraduates at the time, and to almost no women. acterized as spinsters in the parlance of that time. It was a
Throughout her long career, Whiting introduced thousands of common belief that married women had obligations at home
women to physics and astronomy, both fields then associated that should keep them out of academia. Even Wellesley’s pop-
almost entirely with men. Her pedagogical efforts led many of ular second president, Alice Freeman, had to step down when
her female students to pursue their own careers in the sciences. she married in 1887. Faculty lived on or near campus, often
with their mothers or sisters; Whiting, for instance, lived with
Wellesley, Whiting, and a new science pedagogy her sister Elizabeth, who was also on the Wellesley staff. In
Philanthropists Pauline Fowle Durant and Henry Fowle Du- some cases, Wellesley faculty lived with other women in mu-
rant founded Wellesley College in 1870 as an educational ex- tually beneficial relationships, some platonic and some not, that
periment. At that time there were few options for women to Henry James and others in the late 19th century called Boston
pursue higher education in the US, and the Durants decided to marriages.
use their significant wealth to provide women students and As one of only a few institutions of higher learning in the

AUGUST 2020 | PHYSICS TODAY 27

SARAH FRANCES WHITING

FIGURE 1. SARAH FRANCES WHITING (1847–1927) USING A

US that both employed and educated women, Wellesley quickly
FLUOROSCOPE to examine the bones in her hand in Wellesley
became a haven for progressive female intellectuals. Faculty
College’s physics laboratory, circa 1896. On the table in front of her
were engaged in all aspects of college life and worked together
is a Crookes tube mounted on a stand and an induction coil to
to establish a rigorous curriculum like those taught at contem- modulate the voltage. (Courtesy of Wellesley College.)
porary men’s colleges. But there was also a conscious attempt
to set Wellesley apart from other educational institutions. Henry
Durant was quoted as saying, “If we were like other colleges written by her most famous student, astronomer Annie Jump
we should not be what we ought to be.”2 Cannon, class of 1884.4 Whiting had been interested in science
But establishing a successful college for women wasn’t easy. from an early age, in part due to the influence and encourage-
Most female students in that era came to higher education with ment of her father, a teacher himself. After earning a BA in 1864
less training than their male counterparts, and significant num- from Ingham University in Le Roy, New York, she began teach-
bers of them withdrew before earning their degrees, whether ing mathematics and classics at a girls’ secondary school in
to marry or due to other social pressures. Although 246 women Brooklyn. Whiting had no graduate training in the sciences—
matriculated in Wellesley’s first class in 1875, only 18 graduated relatively few of her Wellesley colleagues did in those early
four years later. To combat attrition, the Durants established years—but she attended lectures to further her education and
a preparatory school to ready students for college-level work. made enough of an impression on the educational community
They also expanded the curriculum to encompass a wider to attract the Durants’ attention. They offered her a position at
range of subjects, providing employment opportunities for schol- Wellesley and arranged for her to spend her first two years vis-
arly women in numerous disciplines. From 1875 through at iting colleges and universities in and around New England.
least 1921, for example, Wellesley employed far more female During those years, Whiting became the first woman to at-
scientists than any other institution of higher education in the tend Edward Pickering’s physics classes at MIT. Pickering’s
country.3 novel, hands-on method of laboratory instruction made a strong
One of the most prominent Wellesley scientists was Whit- impression on the Durants and on Whiting, and Whiting used
ing, who was hired to teach physics in 1876. We know a great it as a model to devise her own physics curriculum. Like Pick-
deal about Whiting from her own writings and from obituaries ering, Whiting required her students to design and conduct
28 PHYSICS TODAY | AUGUST 2020
 PHYSICS FACILITIES AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE
laboratory experiments. That practice aligned well with The Wellesley College Calendar for 1877–8 (page 39) boasted
Wellesley’s efforts to encourage students to be actively engaged that the physics department had
in their own learning, and it spread quickly to other disci-
a convenient lecture-room, with lantern and porte lu-
plines. The college developed the first undergraduate labo-
miere constantly in place for the illustration of lectures,
ratory for comparative anatomy in the US, and under the
or the projection upon the screen of minute experiments.
leadership of Alice Van Vechten Brown, art history students
Water, wires from the battery, oxygen and hydrogen and
learned and practiced historical artistic techniques. Brown’s
illuminating gas, are furnished at the lecturer’s desk. The
approach made such an impression on other educators that it
costly apparatus for this department has been selected
became known as the Wellesley method when it was adopted
with great care from the best makers in England, France,
elsewhere.5
Germany, and this country. . . . This is arranged in eight
Facilities at Wellesley separate rooms and alcoves. One dark room is supplied
with a Bunsen’s Photometer for measuring the candle
The hands-on method of teaching physics required an exten-
power of gases, and with apparatus for Spectrum Analy-
sive collection of scientific equipment. Whiting established just
sis, etc. Another room is fitted up for an Electrical Labo-
the second undergraduate physics laboratory in the country,
ratory, and supplied with a Wheatstone’s Bridge and Re-
after MIT, and the first for women. There were few commercial
sistance Coils, Thomson’s Mirror Galvanometer and Lamp
manufacturers of scientific equipment in the US, but with gen-
Stand, made by Elliot of London, and other apparatus
erous funding from the Durants and advice from Pickering,
necessary for Electrical measurements. There is also a
Charles Barker—who Whiting later referred to as her “scien-
battery room and a room for photography.
tific father”6—of the University of Pennsylvania, and others,
Whiting secured what she needed. She selected some instru-
ments from the displays of European manufacturers at the 1876 in order to introduce them to her students. She met Thomas
Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and commissioned the Edison and gave a demonstration of his incandescent bulbs to
manufacture of others by providing exacting specifications to the Wellesley community to persuade trustees to invest in his
New England artisans. When Whiting taught her first physics new technology. She attended classes at the universities of Berlin
classes in fall 1878, her laboratories were extraordinarily well and Edinburgh and interacted with a wide range of scientists
equipped with instruments to study sound, heat, electricity, and in the US and Europe, both in person and via correspondence.
mechanics (see the box on this page). She also had a full selection Her travels and meetings with other scientists were a point of
of photographic apparatus and sophisticated optical instru- pride for Whiting; she later recalled,
ments, including a wide range of spectroscopes (see figure 2).
I was at a meeting of the British Association in 1881
Whiting proved to be a dedicated teacher. She wrote an as-
when Langley’s heat spectrum was announced, in
tronomy textbook—Daytime and Evening Exercises in Astronomy
1888 when Section A was discussing the discover-
for Schools and Colleges (1912)—and multiple articles on science
ies of Hertz, and again in 1896 when the Xrays [sic]
pedagogy, all part of her efforts to train the next generation of
of Roentgen were to the fore and Ramsey gave me
female scientists. She also kept abreast of new developments
a tube of the Helium he had just discovered. At the
American Association in 1900 I was present when
Nichols announced the verification of Maxwell’s
prediction that light exerted pressure. . . . In 1896
I was invited, by exception, to visit the laboratories
of Dewar at the Royal Institution in London and
see the apparatus in action which liquified air. In
1896 also I visited the laboratories of Onnes of Ley-
den the very week he liquified Helium.7
Unfortunately, as women working in what was then very
much a man’s field, Whiting and other female scientists had to
deal with considerable prejudice and limited opportunities.8
Near the end of her career, she reflected on “the somewhat
nerve-wearing experience of constantly being in places where
a woman was not expected to be, and doing what women did
not conventionally do.”6 Some scientists took an enlightened
approach to the presence of women in their ranks. In London,
Whiting met Lord Kelvin; in a 1924 article for Science, she re-
FIGURE 2. A ROOM IN WELLESLEY’S PHYSICS LABORATORY, called being impressed when he was “neither surprised nor
CIRCA 1893. The instrumentation includes various electrostatic alarmed” by her gender.9 But others were concerned about
generators, or Wimshurst machines, Leyden jars, induction coils, what might happen to their comfortable worlds if more women
and a galvanometer. It was only the second undergraduate physics entered their fields. When Whiting met William Crookes in
laboratory in the country, and the first for female students. (Courtesy 1888, he reportedly mused, “What would become of the but-
of Wellesley College Archives, Library & Technology Services.) tons and the breakfasts if all the ladies should know so much
about spectroscopes?”10
AUGUST 2020 | PHYSICS TODAY 29
SARAH FRANCES WHITING

Whiting must have found Crookes’s com-

ment amusing, since she did in fact know a
great deal about spectroscopes. She guided
her students’ laboratory experiments on solar
spectroscopy, emission spectra of various
metals, absorption spectra of chlorophyll,
and, in her Physical Astronomy course, the
classification of stellar spectra.11 That knowl-
edge, along with her emphasis on experi-
mentation, led to her success with x rays.

Röntgen and x rays

In November 1895, while observing the
spectra created by beams of electrons in a
shielded cathode-ray tube, German physi-
cist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen made a re-
markable discovery. An unidentified form of
radiation from the tube was passing through
solid materials and leaving images—what
we would now call a radiograph—on pre-
pared glass photographic plates. After fixing
the images with a chemical bath, he used the
plates as negatives to make paper photo-
graphs that could then be reproduced and
circulated. Although other scientists had no-
ticed similar phenomena, Röntgen was the first to explore the FIGURE 3. SARAH FRANCES WHITING’S COLLEAGUE MABEL
physical properties of that radiation, which he named x rays CHASE PLACES HER HAND ON A GLASS PHOTOGRAPHIC
after the mathematical symbol of an unknown quantity. Rönt- PLATE, below a Crookes tube, to take a radiograph of the bones of
gen published his findings in Sitzungsberichte der Würzburger her hand in Wellesley’s physics laboratory, circa 1896. (Courtesy of
Physikalischen-Medicinischen Gesellschaft (Proceedings of the Wellesley College Archives, Library & Technology Services.)
Würzburg Physico-Medical Society) later that year; the editor de-
cided to forgo the customary prepublication lecture as an ac-
knowledgment of its importance. Whiting’s x-ray experiments
Although Röntgen wrote in German in a journal with lim- On 7 February Whiting joined that elite group. It seems likely
ited circulation, he sent copies of the article and his photo- that Whiting first heard about the discovery from an article in
graphs to colleagues. News of his discovery reached English- the Boston Daily Advertiser on 14 January. The article described
language newspapers by 7 January 1896. Additional accounts Röntgen’s equipment—a Crookes tube, an induction coil, and
quickly followed, culminating with translations of Röntgen’s a battery—all of which were readily available in Wellesley’s
paper in both Nature on 23 January and Science on 14 February. laboratory, along with glass plates, holders, and photographic
A photograph of the hand of Röntgen’s wife, Anna Bertha chemicals.
Ludwig, her wedding ring on her third finger, was a particular Whiting was assisted by a colleague, physics instructor Mabel
sensation. Augusta Chase, who went on to a long career at Mount Holyoke
The ability to render the invisible visible captured the pop- College (see figure 3). In accordance with Wellesley’s labora-
ular imagination in a way few previous scientific announce- tory teaching methods, the two instructors were joined by at
ments had, prompting songs, poems, books, and public demon- least two students: Cannon, who had returned to take addi-
strations. (It was not until later, of course, that scientists and tional classes before continuing her astronomy studies at Rad-
physicians realized the risks associated with x-ray exposure.12) cliffe College and Harvard, and Grace Evangeline Davis, class
Prominent physicists all over the world, along with quite a of 1898, who became a noted meteorologist and taught physics
few amateur scientists, rushed to replicate Röntgen’s experi- at Wellesley from 1899 to 1936. Together the women experi-
ments. In 1926 a graduate of Davidson College claimed that he mented with several variables—different objects, equipment,
and his classmates had secretly conducted a successful x-ray and timings—to produce at least 15 “shadow photographs,” as
experiment on 12 January 1896; that claim, however, cannot be Whiting described the x-ray images left on the glass plates.
corroborated.13 The first confirmed successes in the US had Other than annotations on the reverse of some of the pho-
the backing of major research universities: Arthur Wright at tographs made from those plates, Whiting left no written doc-
Yale University on 27 January, John Trowbridge at Harvard umentation of her x-ray experiments. However, someone alerted
University by 29 January, Edwin Frost at Dartmouth College the Boston Daily Advertiser, who reported it on 8 February. The
on 3 February, Mihajlo Pupin at Columbia University on 4 Feb- Advertiser also interviewed Whiting for a longer article that ap-
ruary, Arthur Goodspeed at the University of Pennsylvania peared on 11 February. In that piece, she described the results
on 5 February, and William Magie at Princeton University on of her experiments at length, explaining her use of different
6 February.14 power sources, exposure times, and materials to improve the
30 PHYSICS TODAY | AUGUST 2020
quality of her images and investigate the degree to which the hook,” we both exclaimed, and so it was, clear and
rays would penetrate materials of different density. unmistakable. The pincers came out too, but the
Additional information about their first experiment comes key did not.15
from a letter Cannon wrote to her cousin Ned Jump. On the re-
Whiting annotated a photograph of the experiment with her
verse of torn sheets of mimeographed lecture notes, Cannon
name and that of Chase and the following description: “A pic-
described their efforts in detail:
ture hook + pincers in a wooden box. First attempt. Under-
We took – a photograph this morning by the so- exposed but showed that success was attainable with apparatus
called Röntgen process, or by the Cathode rays. It in use viz a crooks tube [here she inserted a sketch of the tube]
is not a brilliant negative, but it is there, that’s the made to show molecular shadows. Executed with 6 in coil.”
point. . . . Miss Whiting has been intending to try That last phrase refers to the six-inch-diameter induction coil
it, and so concluded to do it immediately. We visible on Whiting’s work bench in figure 1.
arranged it very simply thus. A current from four Even underexposed, it was a thrilling outcome and gave the
cells was passed through a Ruhmkorff coil, and women a better sense of how to proceed. Cannon’s letter out-
connected to a Crook’s tube. On the table where lined their next steps: “While I am writing to you, we have an-
they were all placed, right under the cathode of the other [glass] plate, shall I say, exposed. It’s the queerest looking
tube, we laid a plate holder horizontally, [glass] exposure you ever saw. A dark paste-board box, with various
slide in. On top of the slide, we placed a pair of metallic objects inside is tied onto a plate-holder, [glass] slide
pincers, a picture hook, a key. We started the cur- in—all standing up before the Crook’s tube, while the current
rent, and left them all in position one hour and a is sizzing away. We are going to give it two hours.”15
quarter. Miss Chase + I then proceeded to the dark A few hours later, an exhausted Cannon added another page
room to develop. Little did I think there would be to her letter. She revealed, “I stayed up to develop the second
anything there to develop! I was somewhat ex- one + have a good negative. Everything inside the box is good,
cited, you may imagine. At first, there did not but there’s no sign of the box, no sign of the [glass] slide. I am
seem to be anything. I covered the plate tight, to tired + can not write more.”15
beware of fog. The next time I looked, lo and be- The women made a photograph from that negative too.
hold there was a light streak, “It’s the picture- The objects—a ring, a hook, and two unidentifiable shapes—
appeared blurry, but the image was nevertheless an improve-
ment over their first. Whiting’s annotation reads, “Metal objects
taken in a wooden box. The second picture taken just after
newspaper accounts of xray discovery.” Whiting and Chase then
conducted a third experiment, this time exposing blocks of dif-
ferent materials, including glass, quartz, gum, alum, spar, and
salt, to assess their relative transparency to x rays. The different
materials made it difficult to determine exposure time; the image
showed little variation between the blocks, and Whiting noted
on the reverse: “A bad print.”
Whiting’s annotations demonstrate that she was keen to
keep track of and perfect her experiments. She used the knowl-
edge gained from the first three attempts to make additional
images. In a number of them she used laboratory objects, such
as screwdrivers, placed inside containers that seemed to mirac-
ulously disappear when exposed to radiation. In one case, she
used an assortment of metal jewelry (see figure 4), presumably
her own or that of her colleagues, a striking contrast to the ob-
jects her male counterparts employed. Other images featured
a pince-nez and a round pincushion filled with pins (see the
opening image), tools, and hands with and without rings.

Whiting’s legacy
Whiting’s achievement was celebrated in newspaper articles in
Boston and beyond alongside the work of her male colleagues.

FIGURE 4. WHITING’S X-RAY PHOTOGRAPH OF OBJECTS IN A

LEATHER POUCH. Most of Whiting’s experiments used objects
common to physics laboratories or even the average desk drawer. In
this example, however, she used a group of decidedly female acces-
sories—a ring, a brooch, a heart-shaped pendant on a chain, and an
intricately fashioned link necklace or bracelet—and a tiny key.
(Courtesy of Wellesley College.)

AUGUST 2020 | PHYSICS TODAY 31

SARAH FRANCES WHITING

But some commentators could not resist re- not been published before. As almost cer-
ferring to her gender in patronizing terms. ON THE WEB: tainly the first successful x-ray experiments
On 16 February, the Boston Daily Globe quoted
an unidentified professor as saying, “Per-
PHOTO GALLERY OF in an undergraduate college, they were
made possible by Whiting’s dedication to
haps the women at Wellesley will discover
an entirely new kind of ray—a feminine ray,
Whiting’s x rays the laboratory method of instruction and
her awareness of advances in scientific
or something like that. Or they may find
that the Roentgen ray is composed of two
VISIT knowledge. As the first such experiments
by female faculty and students, they exem-
parts, male and female. Although no great [Link]/Whiting plify the role of both Whiting and Wellesley
scientific discoveries have ever been made at the forefront of the teaching of science,
by a woman, it does not follow that none will ever be, and every and the dissemination of knowledge more broadly, to women
student of science is glad to see the women interested.” in the US. It was a legacy that extended to Whiting’s students,
But Whiting knew what her x-ray experiments meant for who in addition to Cannon, Davis, and Wilson include Isabelle
women’s education. In the 11 February Advertiser article, she Stone, class of 1890, the first American woman to earn a PhD
stated that “the colleges for women are quite as much inter- in physics, and Louise Sherwood McDowell, class of 1898, the
ested and as intelligent in the matter as those for men.” Ac- first American woman to work at the National Bureau of Stan-
counts in Boston area newspapers, and in the New York Tribune, dards, now NIST. From her laboratories at Wellesley College,
indicate that she delivered several lectures about x rays on the Whiting helped to shape the role of women in the sciences for
Wellesley campus in February, March, and April. decades to come.
Like other Wellesley faculty, Whiting was active in Boston’s
intersecting circles of women intellectuals, writers, artists, abo-
litionists, suffragists, and reformers. Her work with Röntgen’s REFERENCES
rays made her a celebrity among those women. Letters in the 1. J. Glasscock, ed., Wellesley College 1875–1975: A Century of Women,
Wellesley College Archives indicate that the reformer Mary Wellesley College (1975); H. L. Horowitz, Alma Mater: Design and
Livermore invited Whiting to speak to Boston’s Fortnightly Club, Experience in the Women’s Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century
a group of women engaged in social justice issues who regu- Beginnings to the 1930s, Knopf (1984); P. A. Palmieri, In Adamless
Eden: The Community of Women Faculty at Wellesley, Yale U. Press
larly gathered for lectures on various topics. On 14 March, the (1995).
Fortnightly Club’s newspaper, The Woman’s Column, reported on 2. S. F. Whiting, “Department of physics,” Wellesley College News,
the great success of the lecture: “The rooms were crowded to hear 22 February 1911, p. 6.
Prof. Whiting, of Wellesley, on the ‘Photography of the Invisible’ 3. M. W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strate-
gies to 1940, Johns Hopkins U. Press (1982), pp. 25–26.
(Roentgen’s Rays). Many were unable even to get standing room.” 4. Ref. 2; S. F. Whiting, “The experiences of a woman physicist,”
Whiting’s x-ray experiments immediately became part of the Wellesley College News, 9 January 1913, p. 1; S. F. Whiting, “His-
physics curriculum taught by Wellesley faculty. While Whiting tory of the Physics Department of Wellesley College from 1878
was on sabbatical during the 1896–97 academic year, her replace- to 1912,” box 2, Physics Department Papers, Wellesley College
ment taught the topic; in her notes, now in the Wellesley Col- Archives; A. J. Cannon, Pop. Astron. 35, 539 (1927); A. J. Cannon,
Science 66, 417 (1927); F. A. Stahl, Am. J. Phys. 73, 1009 (2005).
lege Archives, Florence Crofut, class of 1897, included multiple 5. K. Hentschel, Mapping the Spectrum: Techniques of Visual Represen-
references to “Röntgen rays.” Years later Lucy Wilson, a 1909 tation in Research and Teaching, Oxford U. Press (2002); M. R. S.
graduate who in 1945 became the first holder of Wellesley’s Creese, Ladies in the Laboratory? American and British Women in Sci-
Sarah Frances Whiting Professorship of Physics, remembered ence, 1800–1900: A Survey of Their Contributions to Research, Scare-
crow Press (1998); C. R. Sherman, in The Early Years of Art History
that Whiting “gave two of us a never-forgotten experience when in the United States: Notes and Essays on Departments, Teaching, and
she provided the apparatus by which we repeated Roentgen’s Scholars, C. H. Smyth, P. M. Lukehart, eds., Princeton U. Press
discovery of X rays. The equipment we used was exactly like that (1993), p. 151.
described by Roentgen . . . and we obtained clear photographs 6. Ref. 4, S. F. Whiting, “The experiences of a woman physicist,” p. 3.
of the shadows of our own bones.”16 7. Ref. 4, S. F. Whiting, “History of the Physics Department of
Wellesley College from 1878 to 1912.”
Whiting looked back fondly on the collective female effort 8. M. W. Rossiter, in The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 5, M. J.
that went into her experiments. In a Christmas card to Cannon, Nye, ed., Cambridge U. Press (2002), p. 54.
written sometime between 1914 and 1926, Whiting inscribed a 9. S. F. Whiting, Science 60, 149 (1924), p. 150.
series of reminiscences about her relationship with her former 10. Ref. 4, S. F. Whiting, “The experiences of a woman physicist,” p. 4.
11. Ref. 5, K. Hentschel, p. 385.
student, including a reference to their work with x rays.17 Cannon 12. R. Herzig, Am. Q. 53, 563 (2001).
must have felt the same; in her 4 November 1927 obituary for 13. W. H. Sprunt III, N. C. Med. J. 18, 269 (1957); “X-Ray: Davidson
Whiting in Science, she commented, “The advanced students in College, 1896–1939 and 1940–2010,” Davidsoniana file, Davidson
physics of those days will always remember the zeal with which College Archives.
Miss Whiting immediately set up an old Crookes’ tube and the 14. R. Brecher, E. Brecher, The Rays: A History of Radiology in the
United States and Canada, Robert E. Krieger (1969); P. K. Spiegel,
delight when she actually obtained some of the very first pho- Am. J. Roentgenol. 164, 241 (1995).
tographs taken in this country of coins within a purse and bones 15. A. J. Cannon to N. Jump (7 February 1896), box 1, Personal Cor-
within the flesh.” respondence, Papers of Annie Jump Cannon, 1863–1978, Har-
Whiting retired in 1916, though she remained engaged with vard University Archives.
16. S. S. Hinerfeld, ed., Wellesley After-Images, Wellesley College Club
life at Wellesley until her death in 1927. Although her x-ray ex- of Los Angeles (1974), p. 4.
periments were cited in Cannon’s obituaries and in some mod- 17. S. F. Whiting to A. J. Cannon (no date), Cannon papers, in
ern scholarship, the details and the photographic evidence have ref. 15. PT

32 PHYSICS TODAY | AUGUST 2020

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