It’s Ada Lovelace Day again; time to honor a woman in science who inspires admiration & achievement. Lovelace, you’ll recall, was a progenitor of computer programming—way long before Steve Wozniak & Bill Gates.
In past years I’ve written about computer science pioneer Grace Hopper and Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, a Nobel Laureate in physiology and medicine.
This time round I present to you Joan Strothers Curran, a Welsh optician’s daughter whose sheer brilliance opened academic doors that would have otherwise been locked and barred to a young woman in 1930s Britain. As it is, although she won an open scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge, the University didn’t award degrees to the women who had earned them.
Curran, a scientist and physicist, didn’t get a degree until 1987, when Strathclyde University gave her an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.
From Newnham Curran went to the Cavendish Laboratory, a hotbed of physics research, where she met Sam Curran, a fellow researcher, who would become her husband of more than 50 years.
But World War II came along and Curran and her fellow researchers turned their minds to supporting the war effort. While her husband focused on radar, Curran joined the Counter Measures Group. She is credited with developing “window”, also known as “chaff”, for the Allies. Window consists of bits of reflective material that is dropped into the air to confuse radar.
Specifically, Curran’s window was deployed in the Pas de Calais during the early hours of D-Day to support the idea that the Allied landing would take place there instead of in Normandy. This contributed greatly to the success of D-Day.
At the time of the landings, the Currans were at the University of California at Berkeley, working on the Manhattan Project. Following the war, the family settled in Glasgow, Scotland, and Curran devoted much of her time to advocacy for the physically and mentally disabled.
I first heard of Curran when I read Anthony Cave-Brown’s Bodyguard of Lies, about the multi-layer deceptions surrounding D-Day. A single-line mention of her contribution in all those 900+ pages of text was enough to spark my interest. There does not seem to be anything by way of a biography of her, which is a loss. Joan Strothers Curran’s brilliant scientific mind helped shorten the worst war the world has known (so far), and turned it to improving the quality of all people’s lives. I want to know more.
5 comments:
I am writing a blog on Paul Kennedy's Engineers of Victory and just read your 'Parallax Views' about my mother-in-law, Lady Joan Curran. Indeed it is a sad fact that her contribution to the war effort has gone largely unnoticed though Swansea, last year (the 100th anniversary of her birth there) was thinking of some recognition.
Yes, I was surprised at how little information there was on her. But I find that sadly rather common. Many of the women involved in science & engineering during the war were focused on solving very complex problems, which they did often in the background. I had the same challenge finding information on Beatrice Shilling, whose work contributed greatly to keeping the RAFs fighters in the air.
Does anyone know of a picture of her other than the copyrighted one from Cambridge university which is in the Wikipedia page? I am doing a short profile about her for my "Engineer of the week" series which I am doing for the centenary year of the Women's Engineering Society.
Sadly, I do not. Even The Independent's obituary of hers has no photo.
Thanks anyway.
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