Gabrielle Donnay

Gabrielle Donnay
Born(1920-03-21)21 March 1920
Landeshut, Germany (now Kamienna Góra, Poland)
Died4 April 1987(1987-04-04) (aged 67)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUCLA (B.A.)
MIT (Ph.D)
Known forCrystal Data
SpouseJoseph Donnay
AwardsPast Presidents’ Medal of the Mineralogical Association of Canada
Scientific career
FieldsCrystallography
InstitutionsCarnegie Institution of Washington
United States Geological Survey
McGill University

Gabrielle Donnay, née Hamburger (21 March 1920 – 4 April 1987), was a German-born American crystallographer and historian of science.[1]

Life

Gabrielle Donnay was born in Landeshut, Germany (now Kamienna Góra, Poland) on 21 March 1920 and emigrated to the United States in 1937.[2] She received her B.A. from UCLA with highest honors in chemistry in 1941 and was awarded her Ph.D in 1949 from MIT. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University from 1949-1950. In 1949, she met and married Joseph (Jose) Donnay, a professor of crystallography and mineralogy at Johns Hopkins University.[3] In 1950, she joined the staff of the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, where she worked until 1969.[3] She had concurrent position at the U.S. Geological Survey from 1952-1955.[3] She was a professor in crystallography at McGill University in Montreal from 1970 to 1981.[4] She died on 4 April 1987 near Mont St-Hilaire, Quebec.[2]

Activities and Achievements

Her interest in tourmaline turned out to be a career long interest. Her paper, co-authored with M.J. Buerger, The Determination of the Crystal Structure of Tourmaline[5] led to 13 more papers on the same topic, including a definitive 1977 paper on the structural mechanism of pyroelectricity in tourmaline.[6]

She and her husband frequently collaborated and they published two editions of "Crystal Data" in 1954 and 1963 to compile the research of all crystallographers. Her area of expertise was in crystal chemistry and structural crystallography. She published more than 134 papers in her lifetime, almost half of which were collaborative projects with her husband.[7]

Donnay published Laboratory Manual in Crystallography based on her classes at McGill University. She also published Women in the Geological Sciences in Canada in an effort correct the injustices that she perceived in the male-dominated field of geology.[2] She was awarded the Past Presidents’ Medal of the Mineralogical Association of Canada in 1983.[2] She was the first women named to the John Hopkins Society of Scholar.[3] She the mineral donnayite is named after her and Jose Donnay[2] and the mineral species Gaidonnayite is named after her.[7][8][9]

References

  1. ^ "Crystallography Tree - Gabrielle Hamburger Donnay". academictree.org. Retrieved 8 December 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d e Martin, Robert F. (1989-04-01). "Memorial of Gabrielle Donnay March 21, 1920-April 4, 1987". American Mineralogist. 74 (3–4): 491–493. ISSN 0003-004X.
  3. ^ a b c d Wayne, Tiffany K. (2011). American women of science since 1900. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO. pp. 349–350. ISBN 978-1-59884-158-9.
  4. ^ Ogilvie, Marilyn B.; Harvey, Joy (2000). The biographical dictionary of women in science : pioneering lives from ancient times to the mid-20th century. Routledge. ISBN 9780415920384.
  5. ^ Donnay, G. H.; Buerger, M. J. (1950-09-01). "The determination of the crystal structure of tourmaline". Acta Crystallographica. 3 (5): 379–388. Bibcode:1950AcCry...3..379D. doi:10.1107/S0365110X50001051. ISSN 0365-110X.
  6. ^ Donnay, G. (1977-11-01). "Structural mechanism of pyroelectricity in tourmaline". Acta Crystallographica Section A. 33 (6): 927–932. Bibcode:1977AcCrA..33..927D. doi:10.1107/S0567739477002241. ISSN 0567-7394.
  7. ^ a b Sherriff, Barbara L.; Reuter, Shelley. "Notable Canadian Women in the History of Geology". Geoscience Canada. 21 (3): 123–125. ISSN 1911-4850.
  8. ^ Chao, G.Y.; Watkinson, David H. "Gaidonnayite, Na 2 ZrSi 3 O 9 .2H 2 O, a new mineral from Mont Saint Hilaire, Quebec". The Canadian Mineralogist. 12 (5): 316–319 – via GeoScienceWorld.
  9. ^ "Six Women, Past and Present, Who Changed the Way We See the Universe". carnegiescience.edu. 2024-10-28. Retrieved 2024-11-19.