Hilda Lyon

Hilda Margaret Lyon, MA, MSc, AFRAeS (31 May 1896 – 2 December 1946) was a British engineer who invented the "Lyon Shape", a streamlined design used for airships and submarines.

Early life and education Lyon was born in 1896 in Market Weighton, Yorkshire. She was the youngest daughter of Thomas and Margaret Lyon (née Green); her father was a grocer. Hilda Lyon attended Beverley High School and then in 1915 went to Newnham College, Cambridge, from which she obtained a MA in mathematics.

In 1918, Lyon worked as an Aircraft Technical Assistant for Siddeley-Deasy. She moved to George Parnall & Co. in 1920. From 1925 onwards, she was a member of technical staff at the Royal Airship Works in Cardington, helping to develop the R101 rigid airship through her work on aerodynamics.

In 1930, Lyon was awarded the R38 Memorial Prize by the Royal Aeronautical Society for her paper "The Strength of Transverse Frames of Rigid Airships". It was the first time that any prize of the society had been won by a woman. After submitting her thesis, Lyon went to Göttingen in Germany, and conducted research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft für Strömungsforschung with Ludwig Prandtl.

The launch of in 1955From 1937, Lyon returned to full-time aerodynamic research as a Principal Scientific Officer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough. She first worked in wind tunnels on boundary layer suction, then joined the Stability Section.

Commemoration

Lyon's biography was published by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on 9 May 2019 as part of their support for the Women's Engineering Society's centenary, and a new book has been published about Hilda's life and work. A blue plaque was installed in Lyon's honour at the site of her father's grocers’ shop (now a Morrisons Daily) in Market Weighton in the East Riding of Yorkshire on Thursday, 27 June 2019.

In 2021, St Mary's Church in Beverley, East Yorkshire announced their intention of installing a stone carving of Hilda Lyon as part of a programme of celebrating women in the restoration of the stonework of the medieval church. The other eight figures include fellow engineer and WES member Amy Johnson, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Seacole, Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, Helen Sharman and Ada Lovelace.