As we publish a new video featuring Lady MacRobert, brought to life by the 21st century innovation of artificial intelligence, MacRobert Award Committee judge Professor Gordon Masterton OBE DL FREng writes that she was one of the most resilient individuals of the last century.
Imagine how you would feel as a mother receiving the news in June 1941 that your son was missing, presumed dead, somewhere over the North Sea after flying his aircraft on a search and rescue mission in the North Sea. And imagine that this was the third son, all pilots, that you had lost in flying accidents or missions in a span of only three years. How would you feel? What would you do next? How would you cope?
Well, Lady MacRobert’s reaction was to write to the Secretary of State for Air:
“It is my wish to make a mother’s immediate reply, in the way that I know would also be my boys’ reply – the gift of £25,000 – to buy a bomber to carry on their work in the most effective way. This expresses my reaction on receiving the news about my sons.
“I have no more sons to wear the Badge or carry it in the fight. If I had ten sons, I know they would all have followed that line of duty.”
Lady Rachel Workman MacRobert's sons, Sir Alasdair, Sir Roderic and Sir Iain were all pilots, and were all killed between 1938 and 1941.
The RAF willingly acceded and the Stirling Bomber that was purchased was duly named “MacRobert’s Reply”.
A year later, Lady MacRobert made another gift of £20,000 to buy four Hawker Hurricanes, named after her three sons, and “The Lady”. She also became a public figure and spoke widely at rallies raising funds for the “Wings For Victory” campaign across the country.
Perhaps this amazing resilience can be explained as outright benevolence and philanthropy in the face of adversity, but I think Lady MacRobert was also demonstrating her scientific training in responding to a situation logically and analytically. Her sons had been committed to a cause – to win the war – and the means of contributing to a conclusion had been taken from them.
She was lucky enough to have resources to contribute on their behalf towards the same outcome. So gifting aircraft to the RAF was the consistent and logical thing to do from that point onwards.
So, who was this formidable woman?
Rachel Workman was an American, born in 1884 to a wealthy New England family, her father being a former Governor of Massachusetts. From 1907-08 she studied Geology and Political Economy at the University of Edinburgh. In 1909, she visited India with her parents and on the return leg she met Alexander MacRobert, a self-made Aberdonian and highly successful mill owner and businessman who founded the British India Corporation and was later awarded a Knighthood. He had been widowed four years earlier. They formed an attachment, romance blossomed, and they married two years later.
But Rachel had made it clear she had no intention of giving up her science to become a full-time wife and mother. She continued with her studies in geology and was the first woman to be admitted to the Royal School of Mines at Imperial College, and graduated in Geology the same year she married Alexander.
Throughout her career, she researched glacial geomorphology, petrology, and mineralogy in Scotland, Sweden, and Norway. She was active in the research community and endeavoured to attend as many scientific meetings as she could, never deterred by the custom that women were not permitted to join learned societies at the time. She became a Fellow of the Geological Society of Stockholm before becoming one of the first female Fellows elected to the Geological Society of London in 1919.
She was a suffragette, and condoned militant demonstrations. In letters to Alexander after suffragettes had set fire to a school in Aberdeen and invaded a church to disrupt a service, she said: “Girls have no sort of life under present social conditions and the wickedness of men at large.” No surprise then that she was once described as “charmingly volcanic”.
Lady MacRobert with a microscope
She continued her philanthropic donations in support of the military and other causes close to the family. She funded the MacRobert Hall at Robert Gordon’s Institute, where her husband had taught classes before leaving for India. She supported the local community in Tarland with a new village hall and made endowments to youth organisations.
Before she died in 1954, this resourceful and resilient woman had established a series of philanthropic Trusts, now consolidated into the MacRobert Trust, for which I’m fortunate enough to be one of the Trustees.
Discover more about Lady MacRobert
In May 2024, Lady MacRobert was the subject of BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives series. I joined the Academy’s CEO, Dr Hayaatun Sillem CBE, on the podcast to bring Lady MacRobert’s story to life. Listen to the episode.
Thanks to the power of AI, you can meet Lady MacRobert for yourself. In the below video she talks about the MacRobert Award and some of the incredible innovations which have won the prize over the years. Celebrating its 55th anniversary in 2024, the MacRobert Award is the UK's longest running and most prestigious national prize for engineering innovation and named in honour of Lady MacRobert.
Lady MacRobert was brought to life using AI to create animated visuals and speech. The video was scripted by the Royal Academy of Engineering and was made with the full cooperation of the MacRobert Trust.
We’ll be announcing the finalists of the 2024 Award in June 2024. Follow us on our social channels to find out who our finalists will be and learn more about them.
Professor Gordon Masterton OBE DL FREng FRSE is Professor Emeritus of Future Infrastructure, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and a Trustee of the MacRobert Trust.