Lost Women of Science Conversations: Hertha Ayrton - Electrical Engineer Extraordinaire

Join Lost Women of Science, the award-winning podcast that tells the stories of remarkable - and largely unheralded - female scientists throughout history, for an evening celebrating Royal Society Hughes Medal-winner Hertha Ayrton: inventor, engineer, suffragette, trailblazer and firefighter.

This special recording of Lost Women of Science Conversations: Hertha Ayrton - Electrical Engineer Extraordinaire will be hosted by acclaimed broadcaster and author, Claudia Hammond. Joining Claudia will be Professor Dame Polina Bayvel FRS (Royal Society Research Professor, Professor of Optical Communications & Networks, UCL, and Head of Optical Networks Group) and Helen Arney (science presenter and writer of the musical The Cambridge First All-Ladies Fire Brigade, which features Hertha’s story).

In this interactive discussion and podcast recording, science, history, music and storytelling come together to celebrate Hertha Ayrton and shine a light on her scientific ingenuity, including how she made electric lighting safer and invented a fan to disperse poisonous gas from WWI trenches. The panel will also delve into her relationship with the Royal Society and explore the strong bonds between her scientific endeavours and social activism.

Lost Women of Science is a non-profit educational organisation based in the USA that tells the remarkable stories of groundbreaking female scientists who never received the recognition they deserved - until now.