Summary
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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service. |
| 0:04.7 | Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests. |
| 0:08.8 | Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook. |
| 0:11.2 | Technology doesn't want to be good or bad. |
| 0:15.0 | It's in the hands of the creator. |
| 0:16.7 | It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room. |
| 0:20.7 | If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, |
| 0:24.6 | you're doing the wrong thing. |
| 0:26.0 | Julie, at your service. |
| 0:27.8 | Listen to all episodes on BBC sales. |
| 0:31.3 | This is the BBC. Imagine you've got more than a dozen patented inventions to your name and that as a result of your great success and the science that you've pioneered behind it, you've been proposed |
| 0:45.9 | as a member of that august scientific institution, The Royal Society. |
| 0:51.4 | But your |
| 0:54.4 | discoveries aren't important, but because you're not a legal entity |
| 0:59.6 | because you're a married woman. That's what befell today's great life, |
| 1:04.6 | a pioneering female Victorian scientist |
| 1:07.9 | who's been chosen by my guest Helen Arnie. |
| 1:10.7 | Helen, welcome, we'll name your chosen figure in a moment but in terms of what you do |
| 1:15.3 | it should be said that science and comedy don't always make naturally comfortable |
| 1:20.5 | partners but that's the niche you've carved out for yourself. |
| 1:23.8 | You're a physicist who does stand up, the Geek Songstress with a trio known as Festival of the Spoken |
| 1:29.7 | Nurd, who tore the country using science as entertainment and who have a comedy series on |
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