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Engineering historian, Dr Nina Baker, will present to us the long and illustrious history of women’s technical work at the RAE (and its predecessors) from the Weinling family of balloon-makers, through the maths stars recruited after the First World War to the work of the Cold War and early Space Age. Whilst the general public are becoming more aware of Beatrice Shilling’s work on the Merlin engines, they might have less awareness of her postwar work on rockets or of the aeronautical engineering work of Hilda Lyon on the R101 and WW2 aircraft longitudinal stability, or Anne Burns pioneering work on strain gauges and then clear air turbulence. Still less-known are likely to be the many other women who worked on oxygen systems, early space suits, the effects of G on the human body and many other essential features that make flying safer for all. This talk will be an introduction to a number of these more forgotten women’s significant contributions to the RAE’s work.
Dr Nina has had a varied career, having become a merchant navy deck officer on leaving school and later taken an engineering design degree in her 30s, from the University of Warwick. She then gained a PhD in concrete durability from the University of Liverpool. She has lived with her family in Glasgow since 1989, working variously as a materials lecturer in further education and as a university research administrator and, until 2017, as an elected city councillor. Now retired from all that, her interest in promoting STEM careers for girls has led her to become an independent researcher, mainly specialising in the history of women in engineering. She was Deacon of the Incorporation of Hammermen of Glasgow for 2022-2023. She has been a Deputy Lieutenant in the Glasgow Lieutenancy since 2017 and was appointed an OBE in the 2023 New Year’s Honours’ list, for services to the history of women in engineering.
She has published a biography of the aeronautical engineer, Hilda Lyon: “Adventures in Aeronautical design. The life of Hilda M. Lyon”.