Hertha Ayrton (Portsea, 1854 – Bexhill-on-sea 1923), was a British engineer, mathematician, physicist and inventor. She was awarded the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society for her studies of the electric arc and wave formation of dunes and sea waves. The Council of the Royal Society rejected her application for membership because she was a married woman. Even so, in 1904, she became the first woman to read a paper before the Royal Society.
