EDITH CLARKE

(1883 - 1959)

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Edith Clarke was born in a small farming community in Maryland and went to Vassar College at age eighteen to study mathematics and astronomy. She graduated in 1908 with honors. After that she taught mathematics at a private girls' school in San Francisco, and then at Marshall College in Huntington, West Virginia. In the Fall of 1911, Edith enrolled as a civil engineering student at the University of Wisconsin. At the end of her first year, she took a summer job at AT & T and she enjoyed it so much that she did not resume her studies.

In 1918, Edith left to enroll in the EE program at MIT, earning her MSc. degree (the first degree ever awarded by that department to a woman) in June 1919. In 1919, she took a job as a "computor" for GE in Schenectady, NY, and in 1921 filed a patent for a "graphical calculator" to be employed in solving electric power transmission line problems. Also in 1921, she took a leave from GE to take a position as a professor of physics at the U.S.-founded Constantinople Women's College in Turkey. Returning to GE in 1922 as a salaried electrical engineer, Edith continued there till her first retirement in 1945. In 1947, after a brief first retirement on a farm in Maryland, she accepted an EE professorship at the University of Texas, Austin, and became the first woman to teach engineering there. She worked there as a full professor until her second retirement in 1956.

In a March 14, 1948 interview by the Daily Texan, she commented on the future prospects for women in engineering: "There is no demand for women engineers, as such, as there are for women doctors; but there's always a demand for anyone who can do a good piece of work." A New York Times article of Feb. 19, 1956 , said, "She believes that women may help solve today's critical need for technical manpower."

Additional information can be found at: http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/clarke.html

 

Photo courtesy of http://www.ee.vt.edu/~museum/women/clarke/NCLARKE.gif