Edith Stoney demonstrated considerable mathematical talent and gained a scholarship at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she achieved a First in the Part I Tripos examination in 1893.

After briefly working on gas turbine calculations and searchlight design for Sir Charles Algernon Parsons, she took a mathematics teaching post at the Cheltenham Ladies’ College.

The laboratory was planned for 20 students, and the course content was pure physics, as required by university regulations; it included mechanics, magnetism, electricity, optics, sound, heat and energy.

In her obituary in The Lancet, an ex-student of hers noted: "Her lectures on physics mostly developed into informal talks, during which Miss Stoney, usually in a blue pinafore, scratched on a blackboard with coloured chalks, turning anxiously at intervals to ask 'Have you taken my point?'.

[8] During their time at the Royal Free Hospital, the two sisters actively supported the women's suffrage movement, though opposed the direct violent action with which it was later associated.

At the executive meeting on 19 October 1912, she proposed the names of two members for a subcommittee to secure the passing into law of a bill to enable women to become barristers, solicitors or parliamentary agents.

Edith Stoney resigned her post at the school in March 1915, and it was recorded that 'with due regret and most unwillingly a change is desirable in the physics lectureship'.

The organisation had gained agreement to set up a new 250-bed tented hospital at Domaine de Chanteloup, Sainte-Savine, near Troyes (France), funded by the Cambridge women's colleges of Girton and Newnham and it became Edith's role to plan and operate the x-ray facilities.

They set up a hospital in an unused silk factory where they treated 100 patients with injuries ranging from frostbite to severe lung and head wounds.

On returning to England, Edith Stoney took a post as lecturer in physics in the Household and Social Science department at King's College for Women which she held until retirement in 1925.

[2][16] In 1936, she established the Johnstone and Florence Stoney Studentship in the BFUW, for ‘research in biological, geological, meteorological or radiological science undertaken preferably in Australia, New Zealand or South Africa’.

[18] Edith Stoney died on 25 June 1938, at age 69, and obituaries were printed in both the scientific and medical press - Nature,[4] The Lancet[7] The Woman Engineer[15] and national newspapers in England, The Times[19] and Australia.

[20] Stoney was remembered for her considerable bravery and resourcefulness in the face of extreme danger, and her imagination in contributing to clinical care under the most difficult conditions of war.