Weatherwatch: how ‘sun queen’ Mária Telkes pioneered solar power

Hungarian-American physicist patented many pieces of technology that harness the sun's rays to create clean energy

During the second world war, American airmen and sailors shot down or torpedoed in the Pacific often became stranded on life rafts and died of dehydration before they could be rescued.

The biophysicist Maria Telkes was drafted in from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to find a way of preventing dehydration and thus saving servicemen's lives.