Isabel Hadfield

Isabel Hodgson Hadfield (29 January 1893 – 6 February 1965 ) was a British physical chemist and one of the first women to be employed as a scientific member of staff for the metallurgy department of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL).

Early life Isabel Hodgson Hadfield was born on 29 January 1893 to Annie (née Hodgson) and George William Hadfield in Welling, Kent, the youngest of three siblings.

Education Hadfield graduated from East London College in 1914, where her father was a schoolmaster. This paper was later published in Vol II Part 4. of The Woman Engineer in September 1925.

Her work experimenting with very small specimens led to her selection in 1931 by Dr Cecil H. Desch to develop microchemical methods in the NPL. As a result of this work she became active in the British Microchemical Club and became known as an authority on microchemistry, developing new techniques and apparatus for use within the field. Her work included experiments and examinations of porcelain apparatus, which were excluded from the existing standard.

She was a member of the Society for Analytical Chemistry, joining in 1944,