Kate Pyne

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).

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.

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.

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'.

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.