Margaret Eliza Maltby was an American physicist notable for measurement of high electrolytic resistances and conductivity of very dilute solutions. She was born in Bristolville, Ohio, and died in New York City.
In 1887, Maltby enrolled at MIT and earned a B.S. degree in 1891. She was the first American woman allowed to take a graduate degree at the University of Göttingen in 1895. She was also the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in physics from Göttingen; in fact, she was the first woman to obtain a physics Ph.D. from any German university. After she received her doctorate she worked at the newly founded Institut für Physikalische Chemie at Göttingen under Walther Hermann Nernst. Invited back to Germany in 1898 to work at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Charlottenburg, Maltby was research assistant to the President, Friedrich Kohlrausch, and helped set the research methodology in the field of conductivity. After returning to the United States, Maltby studied mathematical physics with Arthur Webster at Clark University from 1899 to 1900.
1913-31 Associate Professor and Chair, Physics Department, Barnard College
Work
Most of her significant research occurred before she began teaching at Barnard College, a women's college founded in 1889, where her involvement in administration left her little time for research. Maltby was a mentor to her students, vigorously extending efforts to support their professional advancement. During her 31 years of teaching at Barnard, and the nearly 20 years that she was chair of the physics department, Maltby took a great interest in her students' learning, even introducing physics courses for non-physicists, including probably the first course in the physics of music. There are many examples of her efforts to support the professional advancement of female physicists. As chair of the American Association of University Women Committee on Fellowships, Maltby administered funds that supported women actively engaged in physics research during the early part of their careers. Since women were not eligible for many research fellowships because of their gender, the AAUW Fellowships were critical for maintaining a cadre of women physicists. Maltby's enormous effort contributed to the Fellowships' preservation. Despite Barnard College's Dean's Rule that stated, "the College cannot afford to have women on the staff to whom the college work is secondary; the College is not willing to stamp with approval a woman to whom self-elected home duties can be secondary," Maltby supported women's efforts to do both. As chair of the Physics Department, she vigorously opposed the forced resignation of Harriet Brooks when she planned to marry. Physicist and History of Science interviewer Katharine Sopka wrote that her students greatly admired her. One wrote her that, "Professor Maltby was my mentor--a gracious lady--a friend and a counselor. Her most memorable advice to me was not to forego marriage for a career--which advice I followed and lived happily ever after." Maltby never married. The first edition of American Men of Science, published in 1906, recognized her name with star to note her as one of the country's top scientists.
"Methode zur Bestimmung der Periode electrischer Schwingungen," AnPhCh 61: 553.
"Das elektrische Leitvermögen wässriger Lösungen von Alkali-Chloriden und Nitraten," in Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen der Physikalisch-Technischen Reichsanstalt. Vol. 3: 156 with F. Kohlrausch.
Maltby's publications on education
"A Few Points of Comparison between German and American Universities," PAColA 2ds. 62: 1.
"The Relation of Physics and Chemistry to the College Science Courses," Columbia Quarterly 18: 56.
"The Physicist," in Careers for Women, Catherine Filene, ed. : 430-433.
Appeared in first seven editions of American Men of Science 1906
Margaret E. Maltby Fellowship established by the American Association of University Women 1926
Personal life
"Maltby herself never married but nevertheless enjoyed some of the pleasures of motherhood and grandmotherhood through the adoption in 1901 of the orphaned son of a close friend."—Katharine Sopka. The quote above was the polite fiction accepted by Maltby's friends and associates in the academic world of Barnard College and Columbia University in the first half of the 20th century. And fiction it was. Autosomal DNA tests of Margaret Maltby's "adopted" son's two daughters, available at Ancestry.com., show their descent from ancestral families of Maltby's mother and of her father, evident in the DNA his daughters share with numerous other descendants of those families. It is clear that Philip Randolph Meyer was Maltby's natural son. He was born in June 1897, six months after Maltby's sudden resignation at the end of the Fall 1896 term "in consequence of an accident" from her post as Associate Professor of Physics at Wellesley College. Maltby reappeared to resume her teaching career as an instructor at Lake Erie College in September 1897. She returned to a research position in Germany in 1898, leaving her son in the care of a friend with a well fitted-out nursery. Upon her return to the United States in 1901, she was reunited with her son. She took up her post at Barnard College that same year. She spent the rest of her life in the Columbia University Morningside Heights community except for a year's sabbatical at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University, in 1910, a short-lived attempt to relocate to California for her retirement, and frequent and extensive traveling and touring.
