Name: Women in STEM blue plaques tour with Dr Shini Somara: Episode 3 - Hertha Ayrton
Uploaded: 2026-03-28T17:35:31.000Z
Duration: 1 min 54 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I'm here in Paddington, and it's in honour of Hertha Ayrton.

Adverbs of manner

She was an expert on electrical arcs, but she actually started her career as a mathematician, and

Adverbs of degree

she's a woman after my own heart because she branched into engineering and absolutely loved fluid dynamics, which is my area of expertise.

It was a fan designed to extract poisonous gases which were used during the First World War.

100,000 of them were distributed to British troops and really saved lives.

But it wasn't just the Ayrton fan where she had an impact in engineering.

She patented an engineering drawing tool, and

despite publishing in many engineering journals, she was not admitted into the Royal Society because she was married.

Hertha was so passionate about taking care of women.

In fact, her lounge became an area of comfort for the suffragettes who came out of prison and were weak from the hunger strike.

She really cared about women's rights, but

I think what absolutely warms me to Hertha is the fact that, to her core, she was a problem solver.

She was a true engineer at heart, and here at number 41, Norfolk Square, is her blue plaque.

This blue plaques tour has really inspired me today.

We've covered the stories of such tenacious women who have really shown the importance of hard work, determination, and

Now I think it's time for a nice hot cup of tea.