Margaret Todd (doctor)

Dr. Margaret Todd

Margaret Todd (c. 1859 – 1918) was a Scottish writer and doctor who in 1913 suggested the term "isotope" to chemist Frederick Soddy.

Career

A Glaswegian schoolteacher, in 1886 Todd became one of the first students at the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women after hearing that the Scottish Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons had opened their exams to women. She took eight years to complete the four-year course because, using the pseudonym Graham Travers, during her studies she wrote a novel, Mona Maclean, Medical Student.^{[citation needed]}

This was described by Punch magazine as "a novel with a purpose — no recommendation for a novel, more especially when the purpose selected is that of demonstrating the indispensability of women-doctors". After graduating in 1894 she took her MD in Brussels and was appointed Assistant Medical Officer at Edinburgh Hospital and Dispensary for Women and Children but retired after five years.^{[citation needed]}

Her first book having been exceptionally well received and into further editions, she published Fellow Travellers and Kirsty O’ The Mill Toun in 1896, followed by Windyhaugh in 1898, always using her male pen name, although by 1896 reviewers were calling her "Miss Travers". By 1913 even her publishers added "Margaret Todd, M.D." in parentheses after her pseudonym. In addition to six novels she wrote short stories for magazines.

Personal life

Despite their nineteen-year age difference, Todd was the romantic partner of Dr Sophia Jex-Blake, founder of Dr Todd's university and place of employment. Upon Jex-Blake's retirement in 1899, they moved to Windydene, Mark Cross, where Dr Todd wrote The Way of Escape in 1902 and Growth in 1906. After Dr Jex-Blake died she wrote, under her own name, The Life of Dr Sophia Jex-Blake, a book described as ‘almost too laboriously minute for the general reader’.

Death

She died at the age of fifty-eight, just three months after the book was published in 1918.

According to one source, she committed suicide; her Times obituary states only that she died in a nursing home in London. After her death a scholarship was created in her name at the LSMW.

Other

In 1913 she had suggested the word ‘isotope’ to her distant relation Frederick Soddy. Greek for ‘at the same place’, it suited perfectly and using it he went on to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1921.

Selected writings

• Graham Travers (1894). Mona Maclean, Medical Student. William Blackwood and Sons. http://books.google.com/?id=_S0JAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Mona+Maclean,+Medical+Student.  (1894)

• Fellow Travellers (1896)

• Kirsty O’ The Mill Toun (1896)

• Margaret Georgina Todd, Graham Travers (1899). Windyhaugh. D. Appleton and company. http://books.google.com/?id=Rk8wAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Windyhaugh#PPP9,M2.  (1899)

• The Way of Escape (1902)

• Growth (1906)
• The Life of Sophia Jex-Blake (1918)

Sources

• Nagel, Miriam C. (1982). "Frederick Soddy: From Alchemy to Isotopes". Journal of Chemical Education 59 (9): 739–740. doi:10.1021/ed059p739. 

• National Book League (Great Britain) (1902). Book News. http://books.google.com/?id=0eQRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA939&dq=graham+travers+book+news#PPA939,M1.  - brief biographical information for Margaret Todd

External links

• Classic Chemistry -- Elements and Atoms: Chapter 20 -- Isotopes: Soddy

Persondata
Name	Todd, Margaret
Alternative names
Short description	Scottish medical doctor, schoolteacher and writer
Date of birth	c. 1859
Place of birth	Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Date of death	1918
Place of death	London, England, UK