Honoring Women Engineers

March 2019 is Women's History Month, so I thought it would be appropriate to remember women from the field of engineering who helped drive and inspire our country and add much needed diversity to an otherwise male-dominated profession. What you read below is just a sampling of the many women who have truly made a difference.

Lillian Gilbreth (1878 - 1972):  Ms. Gilbreth advanced the practice of industrial engineering by laying the foundation for work on human factors related to workplace patterns and ergonomic design.  She was the first woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Edith Clarke (1883 - 1959):  Ms. Clarke was the first woman to earn a Master's Degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1919, and was also the first female professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin in her later years.  She was a salaried employee with General Electric (another first), where she solved important electrical problems that became crucial in the industry.

Beulah Louise Henry (1887 - 1973):  Also known as the "Lady Edison" during the 1920s and 1930s, Ms. Henry patented many useful inventions, including a doll with a radio inside and a typewriter that could produce multiple copies without carbon paper.

Stephanie Louise Kwolek (1923 - 2014):  An American chemist who worked for DuPont for more than 40 years, Ms. Kwolek invented the first of a family of polymeric fibers that resulted in the production of Kevlar.  She was awarded the Perkins Medal in 1997 by the American Chemical Society.

Lynn Ann Conway (b. 1938):  Ms. Conway earned her Master's Degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University and spent time at IBM working on the advanced computing systems project.  She began work at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in 1973, where she invented design rules for VLSI ("very large scale integration") chips and pioneered methods for teaching the technology, causing amazing advancement of the industry.

Ellen Ochoa (b. 1958):  Having received a doctorate degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Ms. Ochoa later worked on optical systems at Sandia National Laboratories and NASA Ames Research Center and is a co-inventor of three patents.  She received NASA's highest award, the Distinguished Service Medal, in addition to other honors.  In 1993, she became the first Hispanic woman to go into space and flew 3 more missions after that.