Isabel Joy Bear

Isabel Joy Bear AM (born 4 January 1927)[1] is an Australian chemist who worked at CSIRO for over forty years. She was the first woman to be awarded the Royal Australian Chemical Institute Leighton Medal. She was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2005. Bear identified several metastable zirconium sulphate hydrates, and with Dick Thomas was the first to scientifically describe "petrichor", the smell of rain on dry soil.

Isabel Joy Bear
Born (1927-01-04) 4 January 1927
Camperdown, Victoria
Alma materMelbourne Technical College
Victoria Institute of Colleges
AwardsRoyal Australian Chemical Institute Leighton Medal (1988)
Scientific career
InstitutionsCSIRO
University of Birmingham

Early life and education

Bear was born in Camperdown, Victoria.[2] Her parents were Isabel Hilda Bear and Rolfe William Bear.[2] Her father had served in the Australian Defence Force, and bought a dairy farm in Derrinallum after returning from World War I.[2] She attended the Derrinallum and South Caulfield State Schools and Hampton High School, where she was the school prefect.[2] Toward the end of her school career, Bear had become interested in scientific research.[2] In 1944, at only seventeen years old, Bear joined a chemistry laboratory in the first iteration of CSIRO, where she worked as a laboratory assistant.[2] During the evening she attended the Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT University), where she earned diplomas in applied chemistry and applied science.[2] During the six years it took Bear to complete her diplomas the criteria for joining CSIRO as a researcher had changed, and Bear was no longer eligible to join.[2]

Research and career

In the 1950s Bear moved to the United Kingdom, where she worked at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus.[2] She moved to the University of Birmingham, where she worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the department of metallurgy.[2] Whilst working in Birmingham Bear became interested in solid-state chemistry.[2]

Bear joined the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIRO) in 1953, where she would go on to work for over forty years.[2] She specialised in mineral chemistry, studying the chemical properties of zirconium, hafnium and sulphides.[2] Bear studied phototropic effects in white oxides, including titanium oxide.[2][3] She worked with the Western Mining Co., Ltd., with whom she extracted lithium from Western Australian spodumene.[2] In the 1960s Bear identified several new metastable zirconium sulphate hydrates (a heptahydrate and pentahydrate) and worked to uncover their crystal structures.[4]

In 1964 Bear and her colleague Dick Thomas became the first to scientifically describe the smell of rain, for which Thomas coined the term petrichor.[5][6] Thomas and Bear, like many researchers before them, noticed that dry clays and soils evolve a characteristic odour when they were breathed upon. She performed a series of experiments; steam distilling rocks that had been exposed to dry conditions. During these investigations Bear noticed that the smell was due to a yellowish oil, which they named "petrichor" – blood of the stone.[7] In 2015 researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a high speed video that visualised the aerosols released during rainfall.[8]

In 1967 Bear was promoted to the research staff in the Division of Mineral Chemistry at CSIRO, and was the first and only woman to hold such a position.[2][4] Bear was eventually awarded a doctoral degree in Applied Science from the Victoria Institute of Colleges in 1978.[2][4] That year she was promoted to Senior Principal Scientist.[4] She developed powder anodes from galena for using in electrowinning of lead and developed new processes to treat lead sulphate residues.[2]

In 1988 Bear became the first woman to be awarded the Royal Australian Chemical Institute Leighton Memorial Medal.[4] She worked to document the history of the CSIRO Division of Chemical Engineering and Australia's heritage in mineral chemistry in The History of the CSIRO Division of Mineral Chemistry.[9]

Awards and honours
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References
  1. Centre, The University of Melbourne eScholarship Research. "Bear, Isabel Joy - Biographical entry - Encyclopedia of Australian Science". www.eoas.info. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  2. "Isabel 'Joy' Bear". CSIROpedia. 13 January 2015. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  3. McTaggart, F. K.; Bear, Joy (1955). "Phototropic effects in oxides. I. Titanium dioxide". Journal of Applied Chemistry. 5 (12): 643–653. doi:10.1002/jctb.5010051203. ISSN 1934-998X.
  4. "Bear, Isabel Joy, (AM, FRACI) (1927-) - People and organisations". Trove. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  5. Phillips, Angie (29 July 2019). "The sweet smell of a summer shower?". BBC News. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  6. Bear, I. J.; Thomas, R. G. (1964). "Nature of Argillaceous Odour". Nature. 201 (4923): 993–995. doi:10.1038/201993a0. ISSN 1476-4687.
  7. Poynton, Howard. "The smell of rain: how CSIRO invented a new word". The Conversation. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  8. Rainfall can release aerosols, high-speed video shows, retrieved 11 February 2020
  9. Bear, IJ; Biegler, T; Scott, TR (2001). "Alumina to Zirconia". CSIRO Publishing. doi:10.1071/9780643104884.
  10. Centre, The University of Melbourne eScholarship Research. "Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI) - Corporate entry - Encyclopedia of Australian Science". www.eoas.info. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  11. "The smell of rain: how our scientists invented a new word". CSIROscope. 31 March 2015. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  12. "Australia Day 1986 Honours List". Honours PMC. 26 January 1986. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  13. "Victorian Honour Roll of Women" (PDF). Her Place Museum. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
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