Marion Ross Road, King’s Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3DL

Marion Ross (1903 – 1994) was a Scottish physicist and a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. She published pioneering work in x-ray crystallography and made significant contributions to fluid dynamics. During the Second World War, Ross led a Rosyth-based team in the Admiralty who were working on underwater acoustics. After the war she returned to Edinburgh as a lecturer and became one of the first women admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Ross was awarded a Readership Emeritus by the University of Edinburgh in recognition of her extensive contributions to physics, and both a physics prize and a road in Edinburgh’s King’s Buildings are named after her.

Marion Ross, cropped from group photo
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh

Crystal Structure of Beta Alumina, diagram from one of Ross’s publications, 1937
Beavers & Ross, 1937, via Semantic Scholar.org
Sources:
- “Marion Ross (physicist).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Jan. 2023
- “Marion Ross.” Celebrating Diversity: Inspiring Women in History, The University of Edinburgh. Accessed 14 Sept. 2023.
- Beevers, C.A., & Ross, Μ.A. (1937). The Crystal Structure of “Beta Alumina” Na2O·11Al2O3. Zeitschrift für Kristallographie – Crystalline Materials, 97, 59 – 66.
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