Hertha Ayrton, originally named Phoebe Sarah Marks, was born on 28 April 1854 on Portsea Island, Hampshire. She studied mathematics at Girton College, Cambridge, and passed her exams in 1880, but was not awarded a degree because the University of Cambridge did not offer degrees to women at that time. Hertha later took external examinations at the University of London and was awarded a Bachelor of Science in 1881.
In 1884 Hertha filed a patent for a line-divider, a tool used to divide lines into equal parts in engineering drawings. This was the first of 26 patents she was awarded. In the same year she began attending classes in electro-technics at Finsbury Technical College, later integrated into Imperial College London, where she was taught by William Ayrton, whom she married in 1885. In 1888 Hertha began giving lectures on electricity to women at Finsbury Technical College, but ill health limited her research work for a time.
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