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1854 – 1923Britain
Hertha Ayrton
Exponential decay is everywhere, from sparks fading to populations levelling off.
A short story
A British engineer who studied electric arcs: the bright sparks that jump between two charged points. Her experiments showed that the brightness of an arc decayed exponentially as the points were drawn apart. She was the first woman elected to the Institution of Electrical Engineers, in 1899; the IEE had to convene an emergency meeting just to decide whether the rules let them admit her.
In their own words
An error that ascribes to a man what was actually the work of a woman has more lives than a cat.
Hertha Ayrton, 1909 letter to the Institution of Electrical Engineers (paraphrased).
The lab their idea turned into
Bloom Lab
Growth that gets faster, and the curve that is its own slope.
Open Bloom Lab →