Meet the engineers behind our newly named rooms

Beryl Platt was one of the earliest women to study aeronautical engineering at Cambridge, graduating during the Second World War. She worked at Hawker Aircraft and British European Airways, focusing on aircraft safety and testing. Later, she entered public service, becoming a life peer and Chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission. In 1984, she founded the WISE campaign to encourage more women into science and engineering and became its Patron in 1995. She was elected an Honorary Fellow of the IET in 1998, and her legacy continues to open doors for others.

Beatrice Shilling was an aeronautical engineer and motorcycle racer with a sharp mind and a fearless approach to problem-solving. She studied engineering at the University of Manchester and wrote her MSc on the internal combustion engine. During WWII, she designed the RAE Restrictor, a simple but effective device that solved a dangerous fault in the Merlin aircraft engine. Earlier in her life, she raced a modified Norton motorcycle at Brooklands, earning a Gold Star for lapping the track at over 100 mph, one of only three women to do so.

Margaret Partridge was an electrical engineer who championed domestic electrification and opened doors for women in engineering. After studying mathematics at Bedford College, she trained as an engineering apprentice and later founded her own electrical contracting business in Exeter. She offered apprenticeships to young women, including Beatrice Shilling, and worked to reform international labour rules for women. She was a founding member of the Electrical Association for Women, an early member of the Women’s Engineering Society, and an Associate Member of the IEE (now the IET).

Sir Charles Kao changed the way the world connects. He was a physicist and electrical engineer whose work laid the foundation for modern fibre optic communications. He studied engineering in London before joining Standard Telecommunication Laboratories, where he began his ground-breaking research. He later held academic and leadership roles in Hong Kong, the UK, and the US, including Vice Chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009, knighted in 2010, and received the IET’s Faraday Medal in 1989.