What's in a name? This is Dr Margaret Todd, Scottish physician, author, and feminist. She coined the word ISOTOPE after hearing Frederick Soddy describe them at a dinner party and bemoan that he had no good word to describe them.
Todd: "Duh! Call them isotopes, Fred"*
#steminist

*so she probs didn't say it like that, but as a scientist and a writer of fiction she knew the value of a good name. She said it should be memorable and easily understood, using Greek or Latin roots. She heard his idea and came up with "isotope" - iso + topos = at the same place.

Soon after in Dec 1913, Soddy first published the word isotope (unsurprisingly) without any credit to Todd-- and you can see what his idea was called before.... just rolls off the tongue! 8 years later, he gets a Nobel prize (in part) for ISOTOPES!

Todd was a pioneering #womaninSTEM studying under Sophia Jex-Blake (and was her long term romantic partner). She completed her MD while writing several novels and campaigning for women's rights and suffrage, probably always in ill health.

Her first novel, under the pseudonym Graham Travers, was "Mona MacLean: Medical Student" (1892) and had almost two editions a year by 1900, but was shat on for its overt feminist themes at the time... It explores human dissection and women's medical education.

She was born in 1859 in Kilrenny (near Anstruther) in Fife. I found her birth certificate and she was actually born at "Farm of East Pitkeirie, Parish of Kilrenny", and the house from that time is still there-- I'm going to go find it.

I hit up the @natlibscotmaps and find 3 structures near East Pitkierie on the 1st OS 6" map One is clearly a farmyard, one looks like a house across from it, and the one to the east looks like a row of cottages. Which one was Todd born in?

Check the OS name book (1853) for the place name for clues. East Pitkierie is "A newly erected farm steading with dwelling House, of 2 stories Occupied by George Todd" --Who's that?!

Margaret's dad is listed as "James Cameron Todd, merchant, Rangoon" and he wasn't there for her birth. Looks like Margaret Georgina Todd was born in the house of her uncle, George. Her mum, Jeannie McBain, was staying with his family while her husband was overseas?

James Todd was a successful merchant, here's his family in 1861 (Margaret age 1). All the family except him and Margaret were born in East Indies. His house had 16 rooms with windows-- he wasnt cash-strapped. Jeannie wouldve had 3 other kids to raise on her own in 1859.

Jeannie was middle-class, single-parenting and pregnant in 1858/1859. She's staying in the "newly erected" 2-storey house at E. Pitkierie, and not the low row of labourer's cottages. The farm has changed a fair bit, but the farmhouse and cottages have not. I'd say I found it.