Joan Curran
26 February 1916 – 19 February 1999
Joan Curran (later Lady Curran) was a member of the Countermeasures Group at TRE where she developed and tested ‘Window’ (now known as ‘Chaff’). Window created a “radar smokescreen” that played a major role in reducing Bomber Commands appalling losses by confusing German radar.
Joan Curran, nee Elizabeth Strothers, was born in 1916 in Swansea, Wales. She was educated at Swansea Girls’ High School, and in 1934 won an open scholarship to Newham College, Cambridge. She gained an honours degree in Physics, but it was not formally awarded as it was before women were allowed Cambridge degrees. She then joined the prestigious Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, where she met her future husband, Sam Curran.
At the beginning of WW2 she worked in a team developing proximity fuses. They produced a prototype variable time fuse, codenamed VT, which used a small, short-range doppler radar system. Britain, however, did not have the facilities to mass produce these at the time, so the technology was gifted to the United States.
Joan married Sam Curran on 7th November 1940. Soon after they transferred to the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE), which at that time was located at Worth Matravers near Swanage in Dorset, and moved to Malvern in 1942.
Joan was a member of the Countermeasures Group where she devised the technology codenamed ‘Window’. Variants of this are used to this day and is now known as ‘Chaff’. She tried various types of radar reflectors, including wires and sheets, before settling on strips of tin foil 1 to 2 centimetres (0.39 to 0.79 in) wide and 25 centimetres (9.8 in) long that could be scattered from bombers, thus disrupting the enemy’s radar. Read more in the Technology section of this website.
In 1944 the Currans were part of a group of British scientists who moved to the US to take part in the Manhattan Project, the development of the atomic bomb.
After the war the Currans moved to Scotland (Sam took a position as Professor of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow University). In the following years the Currans devoted time and effort to the support of others, for example setting up the Scottish Society for the Parents of Mentally Handicapped Children – now called ENABLE Scotland (their first child had been born with a mental disability). Also, Joan was a member of the Greater Glasgow Health Board. Later she established the Lady Curran Endowment Fund to assist overseas student.
