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British engineer and inventor Hertha Marks Ayrton is honoured with today's Google Doodle , 162 years after her birth.

Born Phoebe Sarah Marks in Portsea, Hampshire, on April 28, 1854, she was the oldest of three children of a Polish watchmaker and a British seamstress.

Marks was a celebrated engineer, physicist and inventor who was awarded the Hughes Medal in 1906 by the Royal Society for her work on electric arcs and ripples in sand and water.

'When a wave washes over sand, ripples will appear.'

This simple observation was a scientific mystery until Marks read "The Origin and Growth of Ripple Marks" to the Royal Society in 1904.

She was first woman to do so.

Marks studied at Girton College, Cambridge, and registered 26 patents for mathematical dividers, arc lamps and electrodes between 1884 and her death in 1923.

Her words were then published, marking a permanent contribution to the canon of physical science and a victory over discrimination and exclusion.

Lydia Nichols’ doodle shows Ayrton framed by her breakthrough findings.

Today, her legacy and impact as engineer, mathematician, physicist, and inventor is still rippling through the scientific community, 162 years after her birth.