Marion Ross Road, King’s Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3DL
![A short white street sign on two legs that says Marion Ross Road. The sign is in front of a paved brick circle and trees.](http://curiousedinburgh.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Edinburgh-Women-in-STEM-Trail-10-1-full-size.png)
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.
![A black and white photo (circa 1940s-1950s) of a dark-haired, strong-featured woman, wearing a suit and skirt and sitting in a chair as part of a group photo.](http://curiousedinburgh.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Edinburgh-Women-in-STEM-Trail-10-2-full-size.png)
Marion Ross, cropped from group photo
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh
![Scientific diagram (black and white) of a 3d cuboid with circles and interconnecting lines drawn on it. It is labelled with ‘mirror plane’ and ‘spinel block’.](http://curiousedinburgh.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Edinburgh-Women-in-STEM-Trail-10-3-full-size.png)
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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