Cambridge to Hear Music of Pioneering Fire Brigade Founder

Songs from a musical celebrating the remarkable achievements of Hertha Ayrton will resonate in Cambridge for the first time. Ayrton, a pioneering 19th-century physics student, established an all-women fire brigade at Girton College in 1879. The musical, "The Cambridge First All-Ladies Fire Brigade," brings her story to life.

These musical pieces will be featured at an Open Cambridge event hosted at the university's Whipple Museum on September 12, 2026. This occasion marks the 120th anniversary of Ayrton's prestigious Royal Society Hughes Medal award, a significant recognition as the only woman to receive it in the 20th century.

Hertha Ayrton was a distinguished electrical engineer, mathematician, physicist, and inventor, and an advocate for women's suffrage. The event, named 'Making Marks,' honors her birth name, Phoebe Marks, and will include talks by experts, interactive family activities, and performances by singer-songwriter Noa Shakhar, portraying Ayrton.

While the Whipple Museum does not house Ayrton's instruments, it does preserve a fume cabinet once belonging to Ida Freund, another scientist featured in the musical. Freund, a chemist at Newnham College, utilized this cabinet for experiments involving potentially hazardous substances. The musical also highlights other pioneering Girton students like astronomer Annie Russell Maunder, botanist Ethel Sargant, and mathematician Charlotte Scott.