Agnes Pockels

Agnes Luise Wilhelmine Pockels (14 February 1862 – 21 November 1935) was a German chemist whose research was fundamental in establishing the modern discipline known as surface science, which describes the properties of liquid and solid surfaces and interfaces.

Pockels became interested in fundamental research in surface science through observations of soaps and soapy water in her own home while washing dishes. She devised a surface film balance technique to study the behavior of molecules such as soaps and surfactants at air-liquid interfaces. From these studies, Pockels defined the "Pockels Point" which is the minimum area that a single molecule can occupy in monomolecular films.

Pockels was an autodidact. She was not a paid, professional scientist and had no institutional affiliation and so is an example of a citizen scientist.

By contrast, her brother Friedrich Carl Alwin Pockels, for whom the Pockels effect was named, was a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Heidelberg.