Joan Curran

Joan, Lady Curran (born Joan Elizabeth Strothers; 26 February 1916 – 10 February 1999) was a Welsh physicist who played important roles in the development of radar and the atomic bomb during the Second World War. She devised a method of releasing chaff, a radar countermeasure technique credited with reducing losses among Allied bomber crews. She also worked on the development of the proximity fuse and the electromagnetic isotope separation process for the atomic bomb.

In 1954 she became a founding member of the Scottish Society for the Parents of Mentally Handicapped Children.

Early life Joan Elizabeth Strothers was born on 26 February 1916 in Swansea, Wales, the daughter of an optician, Charles William Strothers, and his wife, Margaret Beatrice, née Millington. She was educated at Swansea Girls' High School, and in 1934 won an open scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1935, she rowed for the ladies' university eight, in the first real Women's boat race against Oxford. She gained an honours degree in physics, mailed to her as a certificate: before the unanimously agreed change to the rules in December 1947 to confer full membership, women were 'denied the honour of graduating with a full Cambridge degree that would make them members of the university.' In her seventies, in 1987, she was honoured with the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa by the University of Strathclyde. They joined the British Mission at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory in California, headed by Mark Oliphant, a distinguished Australian scientist that Joan knew from the Cavendish Laboratory. Oliphant also acted as de facto deputy to Ernest Lawrence, the director of the Radiation Laboratory. The mission of the laboratory was to develop the electromagnetic isotope separation process to create enriched uranium for use in atomic bombs.

While at Berkeley, Joan gave birth to her first child, a daughter, Sheena, who was born severely mentally handicapped.

During the war the Polish 1st Armoured Division had been based in Scotland, establishing ties between the community and Poland. Joan promoted a special relationship with the Technical University of Lodz, and also devoted care and attention to the children's hospital of that city. Later she established the Lady Curran Endowment fund for overseas, particularly Polish, students.