Ruby Payne-Scott


Ruby Violet Payne-Scott, BSc MSc DipEd was an Australian pioneer in radiophysics and radio astronomy, and was the first female radio astronomer.

Early life and education

Ruby Payne-Scott was born on 28 May 1912 in Grafton, New South Wales, the daughter of Cyril Payne-Scott and his wife Amy. She later moved to Sydney to live with her aunt. There she attended the Penrith Public Primary School, and the Cleveland-Street Girls' High School, before completing her secondary schooling at Sydney Girls High School. Her school leaving certificate included honours in mathematics and botany.
She won two scholarships to undertake tertiary education at the University of Sydney, where she studied physics, chemistry, mathematics and botany. She earned a BSc in 1933—the third woman to graduate in physics there—followed by an MSc in physics in 1936 and a Diploma of Education in 1938.

Early career

In 1936, Payne-Scott conducted research with William H. Love at the Cancer Research Laboratory at the University of Sydney. They determined that the magnetism of the earth had little or no effect on the vital processes of beings living on the earth by cultivating chicken embryos with no observable differences, despite being in magnetic fields up to 5000 times as powerful as that of the earth. Some decades earlier it was a widely held belief that the earth's magnetic field produced extensive effects on human beings, and many people would sleep only with the head to the north and the body parallel to the magnetic meridian.
After her cancer research, she worked for year and a term as a secondary school teacher at St Peter's Woodlands Grammar School from 1938 through 1939. Shortly after this, Payne-Scott joined AWA, a prominent electronics manufacturer and operator of two-way radio communications systems in Australia. Although originally hired as a librarian, her work quickly expanded to leading the measurements laboratory and performing electrical engineering research. She left AWA in August 1941, having grown displeased with its research environment.

Contributions to radar and radio astronomy

On 18 August 1941, Payne-Scott joined the Radiophysics Laboratory of the Australian government's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. During World War II, she was engaged in top secret work investigating radar technology, becoming Australia's expert on the detection of aircraft using Plan Position Indicator displays. After the war, in 1948, she published a comprehensive report on factors affecting visibility on PPI displays. She also made important contributions to prototype radar systems operating in the 25cm microwave band, achieving significant improvements.
As the focus of the Radiophysics Lab switched from developing radar systems to repurposing them for scientific pursuits, she was a major contributor to setting new goals. Payne-Scott's expertise as both a physicist and an electrical engineer distinguished her among her colleagues, most of whom lacked a formal physics education. In October 1945, together with Joe Pawsey, and Lindsay McCready, she wrote to Nature documenting a connection between sunspots and increased radio emissions from the sun.
In December 1945, she authored a summary of "all knowledge available and measurements taken" at the Radiophysics Lab, and suggested future research directions that "set the thinking" for the group.
In February 1946, Payne-Scott, McCready, and Pawsey made use of the sea-cliff location of their observation sites to perform the first radio interferometry for astronomical observations, their observations confirming that intense radio 'bursts' originated from the sunspots themselves. Their paper was also the first suggestion of Fourier synthesis in radio astronomy, an idea that hinted at the field's future of aperture synthesis.
From 1946 to 1951, Payne-Scott focused on these 'burst' radio emissions from the sun, and is credited with discovering Type I and III bursts, and with gathering data that helped characterise Types II and IV. As part of this work, together with Alec Little, she designed and built a new 'swept-lobe' interferometer that could draw a map of solar radio emission strength and polarization once every second, and would automatically record to a movie camera whenever emissions reached a certain intensity.

Resignation and second career

In 1951, Payne-Scott's scientific career ended abruptly, with her decision to resign in order to start a family; at the time, there was no maternity leave.
In August 1952, she returned briefly to radio astronomy, participating in the 10th International Union of Radio Science General Assembly at the University of Sydney.
From 1963 to 1974, Payne-Scott returned to teaching at Danebank School, in a southern suburb of Sydney.

Personal life

Payne-Scott was an atheist, a feminist and advocate for women's rights, and a sometime member of the Communist Party. As a result, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation created a substantial file on her activities, with some distortions.
She was a passionate bushwalker, a lover of cats, and also enjoyed knitting.

Family

Ruby Payne-Scott and William Holman Hall secretly married in 1944; at this time, the Commonwealth government had legislated for a marriage bar specifying that married women could not hold a permanent position within public service. She continued to work for CSIRO while secretly married, until the regulations of the new CSIRO in 1949 raised the issue of her marriage. The following year, her treatment by CSIRO resulted in hostile written exchanges with Sir Ian Clunies Ross about the status of married women in the work place. As a result, Payne-Scott lost her permanent position in CSIRO; however, her salary was maintained at a level comparable to that of her male colleagues. In 1951 – just a few months before her son, Peter Gavin Hall, was born – Payne-Scott resigned her post due to there being no maternity leave available at the time.
On leaving her role at CSIRO – with her marriage to Bill having been exposed – Payne-Scott took her husband's name, and was then known as Ruby Hall. They had two children: Peter Gavin Hall – a mathematician who worked in theoretical statistics and probability theory; and Fiona Margaret Hall, an Australian artist whose career is described by Julie Ewington in her 2005 book, Fiona Hall.

Death and legacy

Ruby Payne-Scott died in Mortdale, New South Wales on 25 May 1981, three days short of her 69th birthday. Towards the end of her life, Payne-Scott suffered from Alzheimer's disease. In 2018, the New York Times wrote a belated obituary for her, detailing how her work helped lay the foundation for a new field of science called radio astronomy.
In 2008, CSIRO acknowledged Payne-Scott's contribution to science, and established the Payne-Scott Award, intended "for researchers returning from family-related career breaks".
Danebank School, where she taught after her radio astronomy career, hosts an annual Ruby Payne-Scott Lecture "presented by outstanding women scientists in a variety of fields".
In 2017, the University of Sydney inaugurated the Payne-Scott Professorial Distinctions to honour distinguished professors for their contributions to the University across all areas of leadership, teaching and research.

Professional roles