Her invention helped win a war but still baffled weathermen

June 4, 2013, was a beautiful day in Huntsville, Alabama. Blue skies, mild temperatures. It was just as forecasters predicted,

, but in the hours after lunch, weather experts began spotting what appeared to be a rogue thunderstorm on weather radar. "Blobs," as they call them, are popping up on radar screens. At 4 p.m., it covered the entire city of Huntsville. However, the strange thing is that the actual scenery outside people's windows is still a calm blue.

The source of the cloud turned out to be not a freak weather front, but a cloud of radar chaff, a military technology used by countries around the world today. Its source was the nearby Redstone Arsenal, which seemed to have decided that a warm summer day would be the perfect day for a completely routine military test. An image of a mysterious clump seen on weather radar in Huntsville, Alabama on June 4, 2013. (Baron Service)

Even more surprising than the impact of radar chaff on modern weather systems, its inventor's life's work is overshadowed by the haze of outdated traditions in a male-centered scientific community .

The inventor of radar chaff was a woman named Joan Curran.

Born on the island of Swansea on the coast of Wales, she went to university at Newnham, Cambridge in 1934. Strothers studied physics on a full scholarship and enjoyed rowing in his spare time. After completing her degree requirements in 1938, she went to the university's distinguished Cavendish Laboratory to begin a PhD in physics. At Cavendish,

, Strothers was assigned to work with a young man named Samuel Curran. For two years, Strothers got along well with her new experimental partner. However, as international conflict brewed in Europe, in 1940 the pair were transferred twice to military studies, finally to Exeter. "KDSPE" "KDSPs" are there, two developed proximity fuses to destroy enemy aircraft and rockets. There, Strothers married Sam and took his surname, becoming Joan Curran. Shortly after the November wedding, the Currans transferred to the Telecommunications Research Institute (TRE) in the fall of 1940. Curran joined a team led by R.V. Jones, a British physicist and scientific military intelligence expert, who was developing a way to hide aircraft from enemy radar.

The idea, Jones later explained in his book The Most Secret War, was simple. Radar detectors measure the reflection of radio waves of a certain wavelength from incident objects. It turns out that thin metal strips can oscillate with incoming waves and can also re-radiate the waves. Under the right conditions, reradiated waves can create the sonic impression of a large object, when in fact, there is no such object in Alabama.

This feature means that hundreds of thin reflectors can together reflect as much energy as a British heavy bomber. During a raid, a group of strips might hide the exact location of an aircraft behind a huge cloud of signals, or even fool the enemy into believing they were observing a major attack, when in reality, there were only one or two aircraft. Allied chaff discovered in the Netherlands in 1944 (***)

During the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Curran spent nearly a year conducting painstaking experiments using metal to reflect radar Signal. She tried countless sizes and shapes, from single wires to metallic flyers the size of notebook paper. These flyers are a particularly fun idea because they double as leaflets with printed text. In 1942,

, Curran finally settled on a reflective board about 25 centimeters long and 1.5 centimeters wide. The reflectors were aluminized paper tape bundled in one-pound packages intended to be thrown out to the lead aircraft. When isolated from a group of bombers every minute, they can produce the "radar equivalent of a smoke screen" Jones:

In 1943, when the Allies launched Operation Gomorrah in Hamburg, Germany, the reflector strips were hit by A serious military test. Operation Gomorrah was a brutal air campaign that lasted for more than a week, destroying much of the city and killing nearly 40,000 civilians. But in one night raid, the loss rate was only 12 of 791 aircraft, and the battle was a major victory for the Allies, largely due to Curran's reflectors.

Perhaps most notably, on June 5, 1944, radar chaff was used as part of a massive, carefully planned diversion to prevent German forces from knowing exactly where the Allied forces would begin. Invading Nazi-controlled Europe. Two radar chaff dispensers, Operation Dutiable and Operation Flash, deployed on the eve of what became known as "D-Day," combined with hundreds of dummy paratroopers, drew German attention to the far north of France, far away The beaches of Normandy,

Curran went on to study more scientific and military technology in Britain and the United States, including the Manhattan Project. She was considered a truly unique and skilled researcher, and was praised in her obituary for having "the scientific equivalent of a gardening green finger."

But despite her impressive work, Ke Lan's heritage is obscure due to the customs of the time.

In fact, Curran did not actually have a degree from Cambridge University when he was doing all his outstanding war-victory work. Of course, it was not because of her merit that she completed all the courses for an honors degree in physics, but because in that era, despite all the work done and being hired to continue studying, women were not getting degrees at all.

In 1987, Curran was eventually awarded an honorary doctorate in law from the University of Strathclyde. She died in 1999.

In her obituary, Jones was quoted as saying, "In my opinion, Joan Curran made a greater contribution to the Allied victory in World War II than Sam did." Like many others who were not Like no other female scientist known to history, Curran and her work were discussed only by men, and only among her male colleagues. Her own words were never published or recorded in interviews, leaving her voice unheard by generations of female scientists who followed in her footsteps.

According to Jess Wade, a postdoctoral scholar in solid-state physics at Imperial College London who also created a *** page for female scientists, it is important that we tell the stories of Colen and other scientists. , their work has been obscured.

“We don’t know how many women worked in the laboratories of famous male scientists, or how many discoveries were attributed to women, because men have done a great job of hiding women’s achievements over the centuries. OK," Wade said in a reported email.

This sense of urgency is echoed in the work of organizations like the National Mathematics and Science Initiative (NMSI), a nonprofit education organization based in Dallas, Texas. “It’s important for young girls to see women who are achieving in this field and give them hope, excitement and encouragement that it is entirely possible for them to achieve this dream,” said Lauren Little, communications manager for NMSI ,

NMSI focuses on developing culturally relevant teaching that encourages underrepresented groups like women to pursue careers in these fields. Such teaching includes stories like Curran's, and it's important to tell them now because "it's critical to find (unauthorized scientist) family members and interview them before it's too late," Wade wrote.

We are in an era where female scientists are finally getting their due. They were recognized for their efforts with a series of posters hanging on laboratory and classroom walls and a best-selling Anthology of Women in Science. Outreach groups like 500 Women Scientists are working to increase diversity in science through public speaking events, consulting efforts and political campaign support. Stories about women in science are also making their way into mainstream media through TV shows, features and documentaries,

Curran’s life and work may not be glamorous enough for a TV series or a book . But she still deserves a place in history for changing the course of airborne combat and confusing the 21st century weatherman's tricks.

This article was produced in partnership with NPR's Friends of Joe's Big Idea Network.