Joan Maie Freeman

Joan Maie Freeman (7 January 1918 – 18 March 1998) was an Australian physicist.

Biography

Joan Maie Freeman was born in Perth on 7 January 1918. Her family moved to Sydney in 1922 and she attended the Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School. While still a girl, she took evening classes at Sydney Technical College. While there the school hid her attendance from inspectors, as they thought a girl in the class would reflect negatively on the college.^[1] She completed her Intermediate Certificate Examination and earned a place at the University of Sydney in 1936. he studied mathematics, chemistry, physics and zoology, and was often the only woman, indeed the school stipulated that a seat had to be left vacant between women and men in a lecture hall).^[1] She received her BSc in 1940 and was awarded a Commonwealth Research Scholarship to continue her MSc. She took a position at the Radiophysics Laboratory of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research as a research officer in June 1941. She researched radar during World War II. After the war ended, Freeman engaged in research on the behaviour of low-pressure gas discharges at microwave frequencies. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research then awarded her a Senior Studentship that allowed her to read for her PhD at the University of Cambridge in England. She attended Newnham College and later studied short-range alpha particles with Alex Baxter, working on the HT1 accelerator.^[2]

In 1951 Freeman became Senior Scientific Officer at the Harwell Tandem Accelerator Group. She later led the group and received the Rutherford Medal and Prize in 1976 with Roger Blin-Stoyle, for their research of the beta-radioactivity of complex nuclei. She was the first woman to win the Rutherford Medal.^[1] She received an honorary doctorate from Sydney University and fellowships from the Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society.^[2] She retired in 1978.^[3]

Freeman wrote the 1991 book A Passion for Physics. She died in Oxford on 18 March 1998.^[2] Freeman married John Jelley in 1958.

References