The death of Henry Moseley in August 1915 was lamented by the world’s scientific community. Isaac Asimov commented that Moseley’s death “might well have been the most costly single death of the War to mankind generally.”

Moseley came from a line of great scientific minds – his father was a protégé of Charles Darwin and founder of zoology at Oxford University, his paternal grandfather, Henry Moseley FRS, was professor of natural philosophy at King’s College, London, and his maternal grandfather, John Gwyn Jeffreys FRS, was a specialist on molluscs. Henry Moseley soon showed that he had a remarkable mind.

After finishing his degree at Oxford, he became a lecturer in physics at the University of Manchester, which was a leading hothouse of scientific research, and began work under the direction of Professor Ernest Rutherford. He soon demonstrated an enormous capacity for work with the combination of practical ability and philosophic insight necessary for discovery and problem solving attacking new and difficult problems.

Soon after his arrival in Manchester, Moseley began working with C. G. Darwin (grandson of Charles Darwin who was a lecturer at Manchester) on the X-ray spectra of the elements. Moseley observed and measured the X-ray spectra of chemical elements by diffraction in crystals. By doing so he discovered a systematic relation between wavelength and atomic number – now known as Moseley’s law. Before this, atomic numbers had been thought of as an arbitrary number, based on sequence of atomic weights. Moseley also predicted a number of missing elements and their periodic numbers in the Periodic Table. His method of X-ray crystallography was able to resolve problems which had baffled chemists for a number of years, but through Moseley’s work elements in the periodic table could now be elucidated on the basis of atomic number.

In late November 1913, Moseley left Manchester to return to Oxford to live with his mother. There he worked in Oxford University laboratories, but supported himself by private means. In 1914 Moseley travelled with his mother to Australia to attend the meeting of the British Association. On his return to England he enlisted in the British Army and obtained a commission as lieutenant in the Royal Engineers and posted to Gallipoli. On August 10, 1915, Moseley was in the midst of sending a military order when a sniper’s bullet caught him in the head and killed him. He was 27.

Given all that he had accomplished at such a young age and in a career of only 40 months, many could not help but wonder what Moseley could have achieved had he not been killed.  In a few short years he had explained the basis of the modern periodic table, predicted the elements that would fill in the gaps and showed that x-rays could be a supreme analytical tool.

His death led the British government to establish a new policy barring the country’s most prominent scientists from engaging in active combat duty.

His friends and scientific admirers in many countries united to erect a memorial tablet in the physical laboratory of the University of Manchester.

Gertrude Powicke grew up in a very religious and scholarly family from Stockport; as the daughter of a Congregational minister and the sister of a professor of medieval history. Gertrude was an exceptional student, starting at the Victoria University of Manchester in 1908 and graduating with a degree in Modern Languages in 1911. Following the completion of her studies, she moved on to become a teacher at the Manchester High School for Girls between the years 1911-1913.

Gertrude was also an active supporter of the suffrage cause, canvassing and speaking in favour of female enfranchisement as co-founder and treasurer of the Romiley branch of the North of England suffrage society for a number of years.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Gertrude was keen to get involved with the war effort and was initially put in charge of the refugee clothes store at Manchester High School for Girls, learning first aid in the process. It wasn’t long before she became involved with the Friends’ War Victims Relief Committee and had signed up to volunteer with the Quaker nurses in France.  Travelling close to the front line, she worked with victims in a women’s refuge in Bar-le-Duc, Lorraine, helping the nurses with translating and treatment of the patients. In her first two years she was mainly occupied with relief work among the refugees such as organising a sewing workshop for women and young girls whilst also taking on administrative responsibility with the management of the refuge’s accounts.

From December 1917 onwards, Gertrude adopted a new role within the Friends’ War Victims Relief Committee and used her driving skills (learned at Cockshoots garage in Manchester) to resettle returning refugees, even venturing across the newly liberated front in the Argonne forest to assist villagers stranded north of the front line. During her time with the relief committee, Gertrude sent many letters home to her family and friends detailing the distress of the refugees and the hard work that came with treating them, making her wartime experiences an invaluable source of historical material. Gertrude additionally wrote to Professor Tout during this time. In one of her letters to Tout she writes, ‘I feel very strongly that I ought, if possible, to keep on with the work out here, now that I have got into the swing of it. I can see more and more what one can do and it is all so very much worthwhile.’

In 1919, Gertrude travelled to Poland with the Friends’ War Victims Relief Committee in order to treat an outbreak of Typhus. The epidemic, caused by the sudden surge of refugees returning to their farmland after the war, was ravishing both the Polish people and the Ukrainians that were still fleeing into the country. Gertrude described the horrors of the refugee camps in one of her last letters home, ‘I think it’s one of the saddest sights I’ve ever seen, they have come in in hundreds, sometimes thousands and there is no wood or coal to heat the barracks…If only people in England knew how terrible it is out here, I’m sure they would be running head over heels to help.’

On a tour to inspect the hospital facilities in Eastern Galicia, Gertrude and another of her male colleagues contracted Typhus. She was hospitalised on her return to Warsaw but sadly died on 20^th December 1919, one day after her 31^st birthday.

After travelling through the most war ravished areas of Europe and working in towns incessantly exposed to aerial bombardment, Gertrude became one of the many indirect victims of the First World War. She was buried in the Evangelical-Reformed cemetery in Warsaw, as befitted a Nonconformist. Her death was also felt very strongly in England and contributions of clothing and money for the Polish relief effort were collected by the Manchester Women’s Union in her name.

Gertrude Powicke is remembered in Manchester. Her name features on a number of memorials, including the University of Manchester’s war memorial which is located in the university quadrangle behind Whitworth Hall.

Listen to a BBC radio clip about Gertrude’s life. 

Trained in Oxford, Tout was Professor of History in Manchester from 1890 to 1925. Unlike his predecessor, Ward,  Tout followed the model of the sciences to create a research school of history, including research by third-year undergraduates. His own work demonstrated how government had functioned in medieval England and Wales. He fought to establish the new Victoria University of Manchester and for women’s education; he developed the Faculties of Arts and of Theology, and argued for the inclusion of the professors at the College of Technology. He founded the Manchester University Press, and was a keen supporter of the University Settlement in Ancoats – the basis for the University’s inner-city social work.

Arthur Schuster had been a professor at the Victoria University of Manchester from 1881 to 1907 and designed the physics laboratory in which Moseley worked. After Rutherford’s appointment in 1907, Schuster devoted himself to the international politics of science. But he was German born, to a business family also established in Manchester, and when war broke out he experienced anti-German hostility. 

In September 1915 he was the President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science when its annual public meeting was held in Manchester. It was customary for a formal presidential banner to carry the town’s coat of arms, but Schuster’s banner depicted science, as a female figure veiling her eyes amidst the guns. It was designed and embroidered by his wife’s cousin.

Studied at VUM and returned to Technical School to complete a BScTech and MScTech with Professor Miles Walter who then arranged for him to work with Ernest Rutherford at Cambridge. Here, with Ernest Walton, he developed a very high voltage sources to accelerate protons to disintegrate artificially an atom in 1932. They were the first to do so and were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1951.

As you will perhaps recall I joined the forces at once in August 1914, was seriously wounded in September 1915, and on recovery gained a commission in February 1917 and have since that that date served in France as an officer. Since then I continued to be again wounded, gassed and in addition blown up bodily three times and buried twice…The question that occupies my thoughts more and more is how and when to take up the threads dropped in 1914…I have no clear idea as to the position of men like myself in the scheme for demobilisation. I should therefore be very glad of an interview and your advice if possible. I am at present on leave from France and shall be at the home address from Tuesday. If you have an hour to spare on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday I could slip over to Manchester and should be very glad to so do.