Her invention helped win a war, but it still puzzled meteorologists.

20 13 On June 4th, Huntsville, Alabama ushered in a beautiful day. Blue sky, mild temperature. As the weatherman predicted,

But a few hours after lunch, meteorologists began to see what seemed to be a storm on the weather radar. Their so-called "lump" is rapidly expanding on the radar screen. At 4 pm, it covered the whole city of Huntsville. However, strangely, the actual scenery outside people's windows is still calm blue.

The source of this cloud is not abnormal weather front, but radar chaff, a military technology used by all countries in the world today. Its source is the nearby Redstone Arsenal, and it seems to have decided that a warm summer will be the perfect day for a completely routine military test.

20 13 On June 4th, an image of a mysterious object appeared on the weather radar in Huntsville, Alabama. The impact of (Ba Long Service) on the modern weather system is more surprising than that of radar chaff. The lifelong work of its inventor is covered by the outdated tradition of a male-centered scientific group.

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

She was born in Swansea Island off the coast of Wales, and studied at Newham, Cambridge University in 1934. Strother studied physics on a full scholarship and liked boating in his spare time. After completing the degree requirements in 1938, she went to the excellent Cavendish laboratory of the university and began to study for a doctorate in physics. In cavendish,

Strother was assigned to work with a young man named Samuel Curran. For two years, Strother got along well with her new experimental partner. However, with the brewing of international conflicts in Europe, 1940, the two men were transferred to military research twice, and finally in Exeter. "KDSP" and "KDSP" were there, and two developed proximity fuzes destroyed enemy planes and rockets. There, Strother married Sam and changed her name to Joan Curran. Shortly after the wedding in June, 1 1, the crane family was transferred to the Institute of Telecommunications (TRE) in the autumn of June. Curran joined a team led by British physicist and scientific and military intelligence expert R.V. Jones, which is developing a way to hide aircraft detected by enemy radar.

Jones later explained this idea in his book The Secret War, which was very simple. Radar detectors measures the reflection of radio waves of a specific wavelength on an incident object. It has been proved that the thin metal strip can vibrate with the incident wave and radiate the wave again. Under proper conditions, the re-radiated wave will produce an acoustic impression of a large object, but in fact, there is no such object in Alabama.

This feature means that hundreds of thin reflectors together reflect the same energy as British heavy bombers. In a raid, a set of strips may hide the exact position of the plane behind a huge signal cloud, and even make the enemy believe that they are observing a major attack, when there are actually only one or two planes. Found in Holland 1944.

Allied chaff (* * *) attacked Pearl Harbor in 194 1 year, and the Koran spent nearly a year carrying out arduous experiments, reflecting radar signals with metals. She tried countless sizes and shapes, from a wire to a notebook-sized metal flyer. These leaflets are a particularly interesting idea because they can also be used as printed leaflets. 1942,

Curran finally settled on a reflector about 25 cm long and about 1.5 cm wide. The reflector is aluminum-plated paper tape, which is bundled into a one-pound package and is intended to be thrown out of the leading plane. When isolated from bombers once every minute, they can produce "radar equivalent to smoke bombs" Jones:

1943, when the allied forces launched the Gommolla operation in Hamburg, Germany, the reflection belt was severely tested militarily. Operation Gomorrah was a brutal air strike that lasted for more than a week, destroying most of the city and killing nearly 40 thousand civilians. However, in a night air raid, the loss rate of 79 1 aircraft was only 12. The battle was a great victory for the allied forces, mainly due to the reflector of the Koran.

Perhaps most notably, on June 5, 1944,1radar chaff was used as part of a large-scale and well-designed transfer to prevent the German army from knowing exactly where the allied forces would start invading Nazi-controlled Europe. Two kinds of radar chaff spreaders, taxable operation and flashing operation, deployed on the eve known as "D Day", combined with hundreds of virtual paratroopers, attracted the attention of Germany to the northernmost part of France, far away from Normandy beaches.

Curran continued to study more science and military technology in Britain and the United States, including the Manhattan Project. She is regarded as a truly unique and skilled researcher, and praised in her obituary that there is "the science equivalent to gardening green fingers"

Despite her excellent work, Curran's legacy was vague because of the customs at that time. In fact, when the Koran finished all the outstanding work of winning the war, he didn't actually get a degree from Cambridge University. Of course, this is not because of her achievements, she completed all the courses of honorary degree in physics, but because at that time, although all the work was completed and she was hired to continue her studies, women did not get a degree at all.

1987, Curran finally got an honorary doctorate from university of strathclyde Law Department. She died in 1999.

In her obituary, Jones was quoted as saying, "In my opinion, Joan Curran made a greater contribution to the victory of the allied forces in World War II than Sam." Like many other female scientists unknown to history, Collen and her work have only been discussed by men, and only in her gay affairs. Her own words have never been published or recorded in interviews, which makes the female scientists who follow her generation after generation unable to hear her voice.

According to Jess Wade, a postdoctoral scholar studying solid-state physics in Imperial College London, London, she also created a * * * page for female scientists. It is very important that we tell the story of Collen and other scientists, whose work is blindfolded.

"We don't know how many women work in the laboratories of famous male scientists, or how many discoveries are contributed by women, because men have done a very good job of hiding women's achievements for centuries," Wade said in a report.

This sense of urgency is reflected in the work of some organizations, such as the National Mathematics and Science Initiative (NMSI), a non-profit educational organization located in Dallas, Texas. Lauren Little, public relations manager of NMSI, said: "It is very important for young girls to see women who have made achievements in this field, give them hope, excitement and encouragement, and let them fully realize this dream.

NMSI pays attention to the development of culture-related teaching and encourages underrepresented groups such as women to pursue careers in these fields. This kind of teaching includes stories like Curran, and it is important to tell these stories now because it is very important to "find your family and interview them before it is too late", Wade wrote.

We are in an era when female scientists finally get their due rewards. They have been recognized through a series of efforts, a series of posters have been hung on the walls of laboratories and classrooms, and there is also a best-selling "Selected Works of Women in Science". Outreach organizations such as 500 female scientists are trying to increase scientific diversity consultation and political support through public speaking activities. The stories of women in science are also entering the mainstream media through TV programs, feature films and documentaries.

Curran's life and work may not be gorgeous enough to make a TV play or write a book. But she still deserves a place in history, because she changed the course of airborne operations and puzzled the tricks of meteorologists in 2 1 century.

This article was written in cooperation with Joe's great creative network friend of NPR.