Hertha Ayrton

Great Lives

Helen Arney is a self-confessed science nerd, stand-up entertainer, and once nicknamed a "geek songstress".

Matthew Parris discovers why she's chosen Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923), the pioneering Victorian physicist, inventor and suffragette, as her great life.

Ayrton was the first woman to be admitted into membership of what is today known as the IET, the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Their archivist Anne Locker knows Ayrton's life and works and fields questions from Matthew and Helen.

They discuss how Hertha overcame considerable obstacles to be the first woman who was proposed for the fellowship of the Royal Society. Her candidature was refused on the grounds that as a married woman she had no legal existence in British law.

This did not stop her from patenting over 20 of her inventions, which included a large electric fan designed to disperse mustard gas from the Trenches during the First World War. Fascinated by electricity, her achievements also ranged across mathematics and physics.

Hertha's father was a Jewish immigrant, a watchmaker from Poland, who hawked goods at markets. Nonetheless, Hertha was among the first generation of women to study at Girton College, Cambridge.

Helen Arney, who's one-third of the Festival of the Spoken Nerd, the comedy group that makes science entertaining for audiences, explains why she's championing Ayrton.

Producer: Mark Smalley

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2018.