Gostling was the daughter of George and Sarah Gostling and was born in Stowmarket, Suffolk, in 1873, and lived on Ipswich Street, Stowmarket. Her father was a pharmaceutical chemist and dental surgeon. She attended the Royal Holloway College from 1893 to 1897, obtaining a BSc in Chemistry. She was most likely taught there by Elizabeth Eleanor Field. After graduating from Royal Holloway with a BSc, she was awarded a Bathurst Studentship, which were founded in 1882 for the encouragement of advanced work in any of the natural sciences at Newnham College, Cambridge. She completed her studentship from 1899 to 1900 working for Henry Fenton, and returned to Royal Holloway in 1901, to take up a position as Demonstrator in Chemistry. She resigned her position in 1903 and married William Hobson Mills. Mills had recently been appointed to the Chemical Department of Northern Polytechnic as a lecturer in chemistry. By 1911, the couple had 4 young children, and lived with 2 servants at their home in Crouch End, in North London. Two of her daughters would later be students at Newnham, and a third later became a staff member there. Gostling died at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, on 19 February 1962.
Chemistry research
Gostling’s research with Fenton involved the study of the action of acids on carbohydrates, and in particular, cellulose. She co-published 4 papers with Fenton and a subsequent note on her own. In general terms, this work explored the nature of reaction of acids with carbohydrates, and in particular the reason for an intense purple colour observed on the action of acids with cellulose based carbohydrates. This contribution was detailed in Fenton’s obituary:
“With Miss M. M. Gostling he found that various carbohydrates, in particular fructose, gave a purple colour when dissolved in ether and treated with hydrogen bromide, and this proved to be due to an oxonim salt of a yellow crystalline compound which could be thus obtained in considerable quantity and was shown to be ω-bromoethylfurfuraldehyde.”
The work was presented to the Chemical Society on 7 February 1901. After her marriage, Gostling continued to research with her husband and co-authored a paper with him under her married name. This paper detailed extensive experimental studies on the synthesis of several dinaphthanthracene derivatives, which to that point had been “exceedingly scanty” according to Mills. This work included the first synthesis of pentacene, which is of modern interest as an organic semiconductor.
