Stuckes graduated in 1946 with a BA degree and joined Metropolitan-Vickers, Trafford, as a graduate trainee in the research department. From 1953, she published a series of papers on the thermal and electrical conductivity of semiconductors. She proved the existence of the Johnsen‑Rahbek effect and proposed an electric circuit model to explain the data. In December 1962, she was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and in the following year, she left Metropolitan-Vickers to work as a lecturer in the department of pure and applied physics at the Royal College of Advanced Technology, Salford, that became the University of Salford in 1967.
In 1975, Stuckes, together with John Edwin Parrott, published a well-received textbook that reviewed the theory and experimental data on thermal conductivity in solids and semiconductors. By 1979, she was a senior lecturer in the department of applied acoustics at Salford, and in the following year, she was in charge of the department's heat laboratory. The laboratory was supported by grants from, amongst others, the Science and Engineering Research Council and the Building Research Establishment. These grants funded studies to investigate the efficiency of insulating materials. She led a team to obtain experimental data that would allow builders to calculate a standard level of insulation. In 1982, she presented a television programme for the Open University that demonstrated the usefulness of these simple models of thermal conduction. She retired from the university in September 1988 and died after a long illness at a nursing home in Urmston, Trafford.
After the war, Stuckes' father returned to Bethell Gwyn, and in March 1953, he was elected president of the Bristol Steamship Owners' Association.[8] He had been elected a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers in 1945,[4] and in August 1953, he was elected chair of the Bristol section of the institute.[9] In the 1950s, he was secretary to the Apsley Players,[10] a musical quintet based in Bristol.[11] In September 1956, he retired from Bethell Gwyn after forty-eight years of service.[12]
After leaving Cambridge, Stuckes joined Metropolitan-Vickers, Trafford, Greater Manchester, as a graduate trainee in the research department.[30] Metropolitan-Vickers was a British heavy industrial firm, known for manufacturing electrical equipment and generators, street lighting, and electronics.[31] The company had a relatively favourable attitude to placing graduate women in professional electrical engineering positions. For example, when Stuckes joined the company, Beryl Dent led the computation section and supervised the laboratory team that investigated the physical properties of semiconductors.[32]: 232 [33]: 11 Stuckes collaborated with Dent on Stuckes' first published paper on the heating effects that occur when a current is passed through a semiconductor.[30] Dent suggested methods to solve the equations and computed the numerical integrations.[34]
From 1953, Stuckes published a series of papers on the thermal and electrical conductivity of semiconductors. In one such paper, she investigated the electrostatic force between polished plates of a semiconductor and a metal when placed in contact and a voltage applied.[35]: 183 The force is caused by the free charge that accumulates between the semiconductor and metal surfaces.[36] This force, or attraction, is known as the Johnsen–Rahbek effect, and is proportional to the square of the applied voltage.[37]: 59–60 Stuckes constructed a clutch that consisted of a plate of magnesium orthotitanate, a hard, ceramic semiconductor, that rubbed against a highly-polished steel plate.[38]: 12 She found that abrasion at the contact surfaces caused the force to decrease as the number of operations increased and suggested the presence of an electron field emission effect at the contact boundary.[37]: 59–60 [39]: 5 She proved the existence of the effect, proposed an electric circuit model to explain the data,[40]: 59 and noted that as the voltage increased, the area of field emission also increased, and consequently, this limited the field strength of the circuit.[39]: 5
On 4December 1962, Stuckes was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics,[41]: 22 and in the subsequent year, she left Metropolitan-Vickers to work as a lecturer in the department of pure and applied physics at the Royal College of Advanced Technology, Salford,[42] that became the University of Salford in 1967.[43]: 198 In 1975, Stuckes, together with John Edwin Parrott, published a textbook that reviewed the theory and experimental data on thermal conductivity in solids and semiconductors. Parrott was a scientist at the Aldermaston Court research laboratory of Associated Electrical Industries (the then holding company of Metropolitan-Vickers), and later, professor of physics at University of Wales, Cardiff.[44] In 1956, he had obtained a PhD from the University of Reading on the thermal and thermoelectric properties of semiconductors.[45] Paul Gustav Klemens, late professor of physics at the University of Connecticut,[46] reviewed the book at the time of publication and stated that "[it] is most unique and valuable; the theoretical problem is very difficult, and nowhere is there such a good summary of the useful approximations and the salient results."[47]: 61
The builder is putting the material in an environment that is different from the one in which the conductivity has been measured.
By 1979, Stuckes was a senior lecturer in the department of applied acoustics at Salford,[48] and in 1980, she was in charge of the department's heat laboratory.[49] The laboratory was supported by grants from the Polymer Engineering Directorate and the Building Subcommittee (she was a member of this committee in 1982)[50] of the Science and Engineering Research Council,[51] and the Building Research Establishment in the Department of the Environment.[49] These grants funded a study to investigate how moisture in cavity walls affects the surrounding insulation.[52] At the time, no one knew the exact efficiency of standard polymeric insulating materials as data was based on material in "dry" condition. Stuckes led a team to obtain experimental data that would allow builders to calculate a standard level of insulation.[52] The study concluded that heat transfer in buildings can be modelled adequately by simple, one-dimensional, steady state models.[53]
In 1981, Stuckes was interviewed by Alfred Bates about the most efficient way to heat and insulate homes. The interview was broadcast on 31March 1981, as part of a BBC North West regional television documentary series entitled Towards Tomorrow.[54] In the following year, she presented a television programme for the Open University that demonstrated the usefulness of simple models of thermal conduction.[53][c] The programme was first broadcast on BBC One in the morning of 3May 1982 and formed part of the Open University's unit on heat transfer.[55][56] In the 1980s, she continued to publish research on the thermal properties of building materials. In one study with Anthony Simpson,[d] they found that the shape of air inclusions within vermiculite concrete affected the thermal conductivity of the concrete.[58] This finding was explored further with British Petroleum and resulted in a joint patent being granted on a thermally insulating filler.[59] By May 1986, she was awarded Chartered Physicist status by the Institute of Physics,[60] and by September 1988, she had retired from her position at the university.[61]
Personal life and death
In retirement, Stuckes resided at 58 Carlton Road in Hale, Trafford.[62] In October 1947, she had become engaged to Douglas Perrin Jones, the eldest son of William Henry Perrin Jones of Port Sunlight, Wirral.[2] At the time of their engagement, Douglas was an electrical engineer in the research department at Metropolitan-Vickers.[63]: 716 When they both worked there, he would assist in her research, including in 1953, an investigation into the heating effects that occur when a current is passed through a semiconductor.[34] After their marriage at Bristol in 1949,[64] she continued to use her maiden name in her academic life and scientific publications.[62]
Douglas retired in 1984 after 46 years' service as a research engineer with the General Electric Company. He died in hospital on 15July 1995, aged 75 years, and his funeral service was held on 21July 1995 at Altrincham Crematorium, Dunham Massey.[65] Stuckes died after a long illness on 26September 2006, aged 83 years,[66] at Faversham Nursing Home, Urmston, Trafford.[67] Her funeral service was held at the same crematorium on 3October 2006 and her ashes were later interred in the crematorium grounds.[66]
Academic conferences
The following table lists academic conferences where Stuckes was known to have organised the conference and/or read a paper.
Reginald Chasmar, Eric Durham, and Stuckes presented their paper on the thermal and electrical properties of cadmium telluride and mercury telluride semiconductors.[70]
Stuckes was the organising scientific secretary. The topic of the conference was the thermodynamics and transport properties of high-temperature materials.[73]: 4 The proceedings were reported in two issues of the International Journal of High Temperatures and Refractories.[74]: 28
EP patent 0065410, Simpson, Anthony & Stuckes, Audrey Doris, "Thermally insulating filler and compositions containing such a filler", issued 5 September 1984, assigned to The British Petroleum Company Plc.
Academic papers
Electrical and thermal conductivity of semiconductors
Stuckes, Audrey Doris; Chasmar, Reginald Philip (April 1956). "Measurement of the thermal conductivity of semiconductors". Report of the meeting on semiconductors. London: Physical Society of London. pp. 119–126. OCLC2285213.
Chasmar, Reginald Philip; Durham, Eric Walter; Stuckes, Audrey Doris (1961). "The thermal and electrical properties of cadmium and mercury tellurides". Proceedings of the International Conference on Semiconductor Physics, Prague, 1960. New York: Academic Press and the Publishing House of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. pp. 1018–1022. OCLC2479263.
^Jack's wife, Georgina Winnifred, néeSquires,[16] accompanied him to Medicine Hat but returned to England on 19November 1944, after the station had closed on 17November 1944.[17]
^The scholarship was granted in years when the Catherine Winkworth scholarship was not available.[24]
^
Arrowsmith‑Brown, James, ed. (1915). Official Guide to the City of Bristol. Published with the Authority of the Lord Major and Corporation of the City and County of Bristol. Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd. p. ix. hdl:2027/uc1.b5027345. OCLC35576056.
^
Duff, Peter, ed. (11 March 1953). "Maritime News in brief". The Shipping World. 128 (3115). London: The Shipping World Ltd: 266. OCLC40988441. Shipbuilding and marine engineering news.
^
Duff, Peter, ed. (12 August 1953). "Norwegian Shipping and Shipbuilding". The Shipping World. 129 (3137). London: The Shipping World Ltd: 125. OCLC40988441. Shipbuilding and marine engineering news.
^
Sharpe, Albert Percy, ed. (March 1951). "Directory of B. M. & G. Clubs"(PDF). BMG. Vol. 158, no. 551. London: Clifford Essex Music Company. p. 139. ISSN0005-321X. OCLC1793000. Archived from the original on 5 February 2022. Retrieved 11 November 2022. Banjo, mandolin, guitar.
^
Wendon, William Henry James, ed. (27 September 1956). "Retirement of Mr F. S. Stuckes". Fairplay. 187 (3821). London: Fairplay Publications: 734. ISSN0014-6986. OCLC16458142.
^
Lamb, Peter; Lodge, Eric (August 2000). "15. Christy Brothers in the South West"(PDF). Histelec News (Supplement). Bristol: Western Power Electricity Historical Society. pp. 1–3. Archived(PDF) from the original on 20 September 2020. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
^ ab
"Clifton High School for Girls". The Schools of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland (47th ed.). Lansdown: Burrow's Scholastic Bureau. 1958. p. 149. OCLC555468358.
^
"Natural Sciences Tripos. Part I. Women. Second Class". Supplement for the year 1944‑45 to the Cambridge University Calendar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1944. p. 23. OCLC499998003.
^ ab
"An alphabetical list of members of the university (up to 31 July 1998)". The Cambridge University List of Members up to 31 July 1998. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2000. p. 614. ISBN978-0-521-77754-4. OCLC669103416. Supplement up to 31 July 1998.
^"Metropolitan‑Vickers". www.gracesguide.co.uk. Exeter: Grace's Guide to British Industrial History. 8 June 2022. Archived from the original on 28 October 2022. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
One-dimensional steady state heat transfer via the Wayback Machine. The link opens a video of the Open University television programme presented by Stuckes that was first broadcast on BBC One at 7:05am on 3May 1982. It constitutes programme twelve of thirty-two for the mathematical models and methods module (Open University module code MST204, unit 12).