Frances Mary Hamer

Frances Mary Hamer (1894–1980)[1] was a British chemist who specialized in the sensitization compounds used for photographic processing for which she held many patents.

[2] Frances was born on 14 October 1894 to Sir William Heaton Hamer (1862–1936) and Agnes Conan in Kentish Town, London.

[5] Even as an undergraduate at Girton during the first World War, Hamer joined the research group of Sir William Pope who was investigating a reliable synthetic photographic sensitizer.

[6] They needed a substitute for the chemical pinacyanol (invented by a German company in 1905 and used by them to their advantage during the war), which when incorporated into photographic plates improved their sensitivity toward the red end of the visible spectrum.

[4] The group worked with William Hobson Mills to determine the structure of pinacyanol and identify a reliable way to synthesize it.

[4] While working at Ilford Research Laboratories she met chemist Nellie Ivy Fisher (who would later become the first woman to head a division at Kodak-Australia[8]).

[5][8] Hamer retired fully in 1959 and immediately began writing the book called "the definitive monograph about cyanine dyes.