Elizabeth Laird

Elizabeth Rebecca Laird (December 6, 1874 – March 3, 1969) was a Canadian physicist who chaired the physics department at Mount Holyoke College for nearly four decades. She was the first woman accepted by Sir J. J. Thomson to conduct research at Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory. In her later life she studied electromagnetic radiation for military and medical applications.

In 1893 Laird graduated from the London Collegiate Institute, and went on to study at the University College of the University of Toronto after she was denied an exhibition scholarship due to her gender that would have allowed her to study abroad. Although she wanted to immediately begin graduate study at the University of Toronto, her scholarship applications were denied because of her gender. During her time there, she became the first person to use a Nernst lamp for a physics project. Laird earned her Ph.D. in physics and mathematics from Bryn Mawr College in 1901 for her spectroscopy and magnetism work. She also studied at the University of Würzburg between 1913-1914 and at the University of Chicago in 1919.

In 1945, she was made an honorary professor of physics at the University of Western Ontario and continued working upon the absorption of ultra-high frequency radiation by tissue. Her research studying the effects of microwave radiation on biological materials was supported by the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation. Physicist A.D. Misener said that Laird was "the rare combination of a conscientious and productive research worker and an inspiring and able teacher." and "honours a remarkable person in Western’s history and was the first lecture series in the Faculty of Science to carry the name of an individual." Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador also holds The Elizabeth R. Laird Lecture, established by a bequest from Dr. Elizabeth Laird.

Fellowship, Bryn Mawr College 1897 President's European Fellowship 1898–99 Fellow, American Physical Society Sara Berliner Research Fellow in Würzburg 1913–14 Honorary Research Fellow, Yale University 1925–26 Honorary D.Sc., Toronto University 1927 Honorary LL.D., Western Ontario University 1945