80th Anniversary of VE Day

As we mark 80 years since VE Day, we reflect on the contributions of so many Newnham alumnae to the war effort and highlight the stories of just a few.

In addition to over 70 Newnham alumnae who are known to have worked at Bletchley Park (as revealed in our recent Newnham and Bletchley Park; Women’s Work in World War II exhibition), many other alumnae contributed to the war effort – here we highlight just a few.

Dorothy Garrod (NC 1913)
From 1941 to 1945, Dorothy Garrod took leave of absence from the University and served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). She was based at the RAF Medmenham photographic interpretation unit as a section officer.

Joan Lowther Murray, MBE (née Clark NC 1936) 

Joan was an English cryptanalyst and numismatist who worked as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park on the Enigma project that decrypted the German secret communications.

Joan, Lady Curran (née Strothers NC 1934) 

Lady Curran was a Welsh physicist who played important roles in the development of radar. Most notably, Joan specialised in military red-herrings: she invented aluminium chaff, which was dropped to confuse enemy radar searches for aircraft or ‘invent’ vessels at sea. The invention of "Window" was used extensively in the Channel in the lead-up to D-Day. Read more about Lady Curran and her recent honour from Bomber Command.

Rosalind Franklin (NC 1938)
During the war in 1942 Rosalind took a research position investigating carbon and coal at the British Coal Utilisation Research Association (BCURA). This work formed the basis of her PhD investigating the porosity of coal and the structure of graphite and was applied for use in the production of gas masks during the war.

Greta Burkill (NC 1917) 
“We must save the children” Greta led the Cambridge Children’s Refugee Committee, part of the Kindertransport which evacuated over 10,000 mostly Jewish children, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, & Danzig 1938-9. 

Jadwiga Piłsudska-Jaraczewska (NC 1940) 
Jadwiga was a Polish pilot who served in the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War. 

Letitia Chitty (NC 1916)
An English engineer who achieved several firsts for women engineers, including becoming the first female fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
Her World War II work included research into stresses in submarine hulls under shell attack, extensible cables and pulley blocks for barrage balloons, for the Director of Scientific Research of the Admiralty and the Ministry of Supply. 

Francesca Mary Wilson (NC 1906) 

Francesca was an English schoolteacher, refugee relief worker and writer. In 1937 she travelled Spain, where she organized food relief, established a children's hospital, and started occupational workshops for Spanish refugees during the Spanish Civil War. At the outbreak of the Second World War, she helped Polish refugees in Hungary. Returning to England in 1940 she worked for refugee organizations and after the war joined the new United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), working with displaced survivors of Dachau concentration camp.

Dorothy Hill (NC 1930)
During World War II, Dorothy Hill enlisted in the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service, in the cipher and coding of shipping orders in General Douglas MacArthur's division. 

Marjory Stephenson FRS (NC 1903)
British biochemist Marjory Stephenson served on the Toxin Committee in World War II.

Margaret Priestley (NC 1939) 
At the outbreak of war, Margaret went first to Bletchley Park, and then ended up moving to Naval Intelligence and worked for a very skilled specialist group called NID 30.  She was selected for that, we believe, by a certain Commander Ian Flemming. In 2025 here work was honoured and recognised by the Department of Business and Trade with the Naming of a room in the Old Admiralty Buildings in her memory.

Brenda Lang (NC 1946 née Bentley)
She, and her identical twin Naida (Girton), were both involved at Bletchley Park. Owing to the Official Secrets Act, years later even her future husband did not know what she had done during the war." Read more from her obituary in The Daily Telegraph.