Kate Pyne (June 16, 1943 – June 20, 2015) was an English historian working at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Aldermaston. Her work there included the writing of technical history on various aspects of the British nuclear weapons programme from its earliest days to the present time. Prior to taking a degree in Modern History at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, she worked for many years in the aircraft industry.
Academia Pyne's historical methodologies were made possible by her attending a taught course at Queen Mary & Westfield College, London, where she read Modern History, under the tutelage of Peter Hennessy and his team. Pyne arrived at Queen Mary as a mature student, aged 48, having spent her life savings in paying the University fees. In her first year she won the Skeel Prize for a long essay on Air Power, completed during the summer vacation. In her second year she won a Bursary to spend the long vacation at King's College, Cambridge to begin work on her final year historical research project on the British hydrogen bomb. She graduated in July 1994 with first class honours in Modern History, for which she was awarded a Drapers' Company Prize and an Attlee Prize. At the time of her death she was close to completing her PhD on the UK's first hydrogen weapons at King's College London under the supervision of Professor Mike Goodman. On 1 March 2016 Pyne was posthumously awarded her PhD in Nuclear History (Certificate No. 075157).
Professional career After graduation in 1994, Pyne became Research Assistant to Lorna Arnold, Historian at the Atomic Energy Authority, Harwell, who was writing the official history of the British hydrogen bomb. When that job finished in 1996, she was offered a post at AWE, Aldermaston, what some wag called 'the jam factory' - in honour of one of the contractor firms that built the place – going under the name of 'Chivers'. Pyne could command an audience of up to 500 people on site to come and listen to lectures on nuclear history, whether it was a quick gallop through 50–70 years of history of the development of AW(R)E as part of the UKAEA weapons group, MoD(PE) or lately as a GOCO, or on a specific weapon system and its delivery. This extended to outreach activities in the local community, giving transparency to AWE's activities. Pyne played a similar role in developing and sustaining the annual Charterhouse Conferences organized by Nicholas Hill and Lesley and Dave Wright for many years. These covered both aeronautical and nuclear issues. Pyne, then aged 65, registered as a part-time post-graduate research student at King's College Department of War Studies on January 9, 2008, to study for a PhD because she wanted to know how the United Kingdom acquired the knowledge to design and build thermonuclear warheads.
Public lectures A large part of her outreach activities was centred on giving public lectures to the local community, mostly in her own time, in the evenings. Below is a selection of her lectures, always updated and tweaked depending on the audience.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
