--- title: Google Doodle Honors Scientist Hertha Marks Ayrton description: Google's doodle honors the female scientist for her scientific discoveries and victories over discrimination. canonical: https://time.com/4310634/google-doodle-scientist-hertha-marks-ayrton-ripples-gender/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-04-28T07:59:57.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-05T08:50:19.342Z og:title: Google Doodle Honors British Scientist Hertha Marks Ayrton og:description: She made breakthrough discoveries and tackled gender discrimination in science og:url: https://time.com/4310634/google-doodle-scientist-hertha-marks-ayrton-ripples-gender/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6a5ad0cc4918efa3/698890f7cf40a8697ac43040/hertha-marks-ayrton.jpg?branch=production&width=711&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 711 og:image:height: 400 og:image:alt: hertha-marks-ayrton og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Google Doodle Honors British Scientist Hertha Marks Ayrton twitter:description: She made breakthrough discoveries and tackled gender discrimination in science twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6a5ad0cc4918efa3/698890f7cf40a8697ac43040/hertha-marks-ayrton.jpg?branch=production&width=711&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Google Doodle Honors Scientist Hertha Marks Ayrton > Sponsored content. 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Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=cacb7af3-c08e-4943-8c1c-4ea71632190b&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How Google Makes its Doodles [Watch (HLS stream): How Google Makes its Doodles](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/upF0qp1E.m3u8) (3:23)  _Published 2018-07-07. Our videographer went to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to meet some of the designers and coders who create the special, clever variations on the Google.com logo known as_ by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Apr 28, 2016 7:59 AM UTC Our videographer went to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to meet some of the designers and coders who create the special, clever variations on the Google.com logo known as by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Apr 28, 2016 7:59 AM UTC Hertha Marks Ayrton became the first woman to [present](https://royalsociety.org/news/2010/influential-british-women/) her own work to the U.K.’s Royal Society when she stood in front of the scientific academy in 1904 and read “The Origin and Growth of Ripple Marks.” Until then, scientists were baffled by the creation of ridges in sand when a wave washes over a beach. To celebrate Ayrton’s scientific discoveries and victories over discrimination, Google has honored the British engineer, mathematician, physicist and inventor with a [Doodle](http://www.google.com/doodles/hertha-marks-ayrtons-162nd-birthday), on the 162nd anniversary of her birth. In addition to unlocking the mystery of ripples, Ayrton also became and expert on electric arcs, widely used in lighting at the time. In 1906, the [Royal Society](https://royalsociety.org/news/2010/influential-british-women/) awarded Ayrton with its prestigious Hughes Medal for her contributions to physical sciences. But the academy denied her the honor of becoming a fellow, because she was married. Addressing this kind of gender discrimination in science, Ayrton [wrote](http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/ayrton-hertha-marks): “An error that ascribes to a man what was actually the work of a woman has more lives than a cat.” ## Transcript [00:01] >>The Doodle [00:07] team was able to meet Ira Glass from This American Life, [00:10] and he was just meeting us for fun. I guess, I'm not even [00:13] sure why he was here, but we talked about potentially [00:17] collaborating and they thought that it'd be fun to collaborate [00:21] with us on Valentine's Day, so I took the lead on [00:25] this project. [00:34] >>We do Valentine's Day pretty much every year, and [00:36] we've done your typical like lovebirds and, you know, [00:39] flowers and things like that. But Ira and his [00:44] team are awesome. [00:44] >>They were able to pull stories that they have collected [00:47] over the years, they've recorded new stories for us, and [00:49] they're all about love in all different respects of the word. [00:55] They sent us maybe 8 or 10 stories and they're all really [00:58] fun and really sweet. [00:59] >>The stories run the [ unk ]. There is [01:03] a story about middle school love. [01:03] >>I was in the cafeteria, just got [01:07] on a drink of root beer and she walks up to me. [01:11] >>There is a story about a new bride who's in doubt that [01:14] she made a mistake. [01:14] >>My husband, me and I, we're just so worried, his face I [01:14] could tell. I said, " Where he could be ," you know, and [01:20] I-- and I called the police because I thought [01:24] he got lost or something happened. [01:28] >>When I first got the audio from Ira, my co- worker and I [01:31] listened to it together and we wrote down bullet points of [01:34] where we wanted to have a little drawing come up. [01:37] >>One of my favorite stories, it involves middle schoolers. [01:43] We're titling it, " Puppy Love" so true to the title, I just-- I just [01:46] drew everyone as a dog. [01:47] >>Each stories are-- containing a little candy heart. [01:47] >>And when you click on it, the heart will flip, [01:52] the audio will play and you will also see the images that [01:55] we've drawn to accompany the phrases. So, [01:59] now we are all going to brainstorms together because we [02:02] need the creative side and we also need the technical side [02:04] to tell us what is possible and what isn't possible. For this [02:08] one, it's a pretty conservative on the interactive side, [02:12] because we didn't want to overshadow the audio. When I [02:15] first started, they were no engineers on the team, we only [02:17] did static doodles, but since then, we've started doing more [02:21] animated stuff, more interactive work, and for that we [02:24] needed a dedicated team. [02:24] >>Some of our most like ambitious to those have come [02:26] from engineers that are just incredibly talented [02:30] and spare similar time for our projects. [02:33] >>Sometimes the illustrators will come up with an idea that [02:36] is way too wacky and just not possible yet. The technology [02:41] hasn't been invented, but sometimes we're too [02:43] conservative and it's great to have the engineers there to [02:46] tell us that we can actually be way wackier with our ideas. [02:53] The relationship with my engineer on this was to just keep [02:56] my files size at a reasonable capacity, I was getting [03:00] a little bit ambitious with how many frames I wanted to draw [03:03] and my engineers said, " Hey, you need to double it ." [03:07] >>We tried to do as many doodles as we possibly can. [03:08] We're a pretty small team, relative to how many audiences [03:11] are out there [ unk ], but yeah, we-- you never know what [03:14] you're gonna get. 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