The Big Give -The Peaceful Crystallographer

6th – 13th October 2026

Every donation made through Big Give Women & Girls between midday on the 6th October and midday on the 13th October is doubled, up to our match pot of £700.

Just £2.50, doubled to £5  puts 5 free illustrated books about pioneering scientist Kathleen Lonsdale into the hands of London schoolchildren. £15 doubled to £30 provides books for a whole class.

Donate: https://donate.biggive.org/campaign/a05WS00000GfhJ7YAJ

Working with UCL scientists including Professor Zoë Waller, historian of science Dr Patricia Fara and sculptor Briony Marshall, Electric Voice Theatre are bringing Lonsdale’s story into classrooms and community centres through song. Children get to meet working women scientists, learn what crystallography is, and write and record their own music from the science. The project runs in schools across London and Essex, including Downshall Primary in Ilford (Lonsdale’s own primary school).

This Big Give Women & Girls campaign funds one part of this exciting project: free, age-appropriate books about Kathleen Lonsdale for schools. We are fundraising for 1,000 illustrated booklets for KS2 pupils, graphic novels for secondary schools, and transport so that children in less well-off areas can get to project events.

The Peaceful Crystallographer celebrates the life and work of Dame Kathleen Lonsdale (1903–1971): crystallographer, Quaker, peace campaigner, prison reformer and, by all accounts, a formidable table tennis player. Born in Ireland as the tenth child of a postman and raised in Essex, she proved in 1929 that the benzene ring is flat: a finding that underpins modern chemistry, medicine and drug discovery. In 1945 she was one of the first two women elected Fellows of the Royal Society; in 1949 she became the first woman professor at University College London.

https://donate.biggive.org/campaign/a05WS00000GfhJ7YAJ

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