I am confident that if appointed she would do most excellent research work in Physics". However, Brooks decided to terminate her physics career for unknown reasons. Personal life In 1907, Harriet Brooks married McGill physics instructor Frank Pitcher and settled in Montreal. She became the mother of three children, two of whom tragically died in their teens. She remained active in organizations of university women, but no longer did any work in the field of physics. The obituary of Harriet Brooks was published by The New York Times on April 18, 1933, recording that she had died the previous day in Montreal at the age of 57, crediting her as the "Discoverer of the Recoil of a Radioactive Atom." She died "of a ‘blood disorder’," probably leukaemia caused by radiation exposure. Rutherford wrote a highly laudatory obituary of Brooks in the journal Nature. Legacy The importance of Harriet Brooks' contributions to physics became recognized in the 1980s as foundational work in the field of nuclear science. She was the first person to show that the radioactive substance emitted from thorium was a gas with molecular weight of 40-100, a discovery crucial to the determination that the elements undergo some transmutation in radioactive decay. Her research of radon and actinium was pioneering, and her brief research career was exceedingly accomplished. The Harriet Brooks Building, a nuclear research laboratory at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories was named for her. She was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame in 2002. References Further reading E. Rutherford and H. T. Brooks, "The New Gas from Radium," Trans. R. Soc. Canada, 1901, Section III, 21 Brooks, H. (1901) "Damping of the oscillations in the discharge of a Leyden jar." Master's thesis. External links Canadian Science and Technology Museum Article at UCLA Canadian nuclear physicists 1876 births 1933 deaths Canadian women physicists Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada) Barnard College faculty 20th-century Canadian physicists 20th-century Canadian women scientists Women nuclear physicists