Three Inspirational Women

For International Women's Day this year I was asked to name the three women who most inspired me.

It's not something that I'd thought about before, and of course once I started thinking about it there were so many.

The three I chose were Pauline Black OBE, singer with Ska band The Selecter, Hedy Lamarr, actress and inventor, and Delia Derbyshire, the pioneer of early electronic music.

 All of these women have had interesting twists to their careers which has lead to unexpected creative and scientific output.

 Pauline Black is the singer with Ska band The Selecter. Initially working as a radiographer, she was a founding member and the singer of the Ska band The Selecter, and is an inspirational performer and campaigner for racial equality. Now in her late 60’s she is still performing. 

Delia Derbyshire studied maths and music at Cambridge university which was an achievement for a working class woman in the 1950’s. She went on to create ground breaking work at the BBC radiophonic workshop in the 60’s, famously working on the Doctor Who theme and creating the foundations for much modern electronic music.

Hedy Lamarr was a glamorous film star during Hollywood’s golden ages, and at the height of her film career in the midst of a world war, she invented signal hopping, the basis for all modern wireless communications