Mildred May Gostling

[2] After graduating from Royal Holloway with a BSc (First Class),[3] she was awarded a Bathurst Studentship,[4] which were founded in 1882 for the encouragement of advanced work in any of the natural sciences at Newnham College, Cambridge.

This contribution was detailed in Fenton’s obituary:[1]“With Miss M. M. Gostling he found that various carbohydrates, in particular fructose, gave a purple colour when dissolved in ether and treated with hydrogen bromide, and this proved to be due to an oxonim salt of a yellow crystalline compound which could be thus obtained in considerable quantity and was shown to be ω-bromoethylfurfuraldehyde.”The work was presented to the Chemical Society (London) on 7 February 1901.

This paper detailed extensive experimental studies on the synthesis of several dinaphthanthracene derivatives, which to that point had been “exceedingly scanty” according to Mills.

However, efforts towards the end of the nineteenth century were dismissed, and the issue was raised again in 1904, after Marie Curie was admitted as a Foreign Fellow.

The initiative was led by the biochemist Ida Smedley (Mrs. Maclean), the microbiologist Grace Frankland, and the organic chemist, Martha Annie Whiteley.