Laura Chalk and the Stark Effect

Laura M. Chalk (1904-1996) was the first woman to obtain a Ph.D. in Physics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. The results of her doctoral research on the quantum phenomenon called Stark effect were the first published data to confirm the validity of Erwin Schrödinger's wave mechanics. This paper reconstructs her life and work, asking what the quantum revolution looked like from the standpoint of a young woman toiling in a sub-basement lab and striving to be, as she wrote in a later memoir, ''just one of the boys''. It also seeks to place her in historical perspective, comparing her experience to that of her predecessor at McGill, Harriet Brooks.

I am grateful to the APS Forum for History and Philosophy of Physics for their financial support to attend the APS April Meeting.