Edith Clarke

Women in STEM
Women in STEM
Edith Clarke
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Birth: February 10, 1883

Death: October 29, 1959

Specialty: Electrical engineering 

Major Contributions:

First professionally employed female electrical engineer in the United States

Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2015

3 patents including the Clarke Calculator

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons


Today, we are going to be telling you about a lot of firsts, all accomplished by electrical engineer Edith Clark, born on February 10th, 1883.  

The first woman to earn a master’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT, the first woman to deliver a paper at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers’ annual meeting, the  first professionally employed female electrical engineer in the United States, and first female Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. And those are just some of her achievements. 

After earning her bachelors she started her career at AT&T as a “computer:” a person, usually female, that completed calculations for male engineers. In 1918 she went back to school and obtained her MS in 1919 and began working at General Electric.  But despite having an advanced degree she was still used only as a computer.  In 1921 she filed a patent for a graphical calculator, developed to  improve methods for solving complicated power transmission problems over distances as long as 250 miles, which was granted in 1925. Unsatisfied with being unable to gain employment as an engineer, she left GE in 1921 to travel, ending up in Turkey teaching physics at Constantinople Women’s College. 

Finally hired as an engineer in 1922, she returned to GE where she worked on many projects including helping to build the Hoover Dam and obtaining two more patents related to electrical power transmission. While at GE she published 18 technical papers, included two that won awards, and wrote two textbooks on circuits in AC systems. Even after retiring from GE in 1945 she still had one more first to accomplish – being hired as the first female professor of electrical engineering in the United States. She taught at the University of Texas at Austin as a full professor until her second retirement in 1956 and passed away in 1959. Besides her many awards granted during her lifetime she was  inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2015.

Written by Angela Goad

Sources:

Engineer Girl: Edith Clarke

Wikipedia: Edith Clark

Biographies of Women Mathematicians: Edith Clarke

National Inventors Hall of Fame: Edith Clarke

See Also:

Girl Power: Barrier-Busting Electrical Engineer Joins Edison, Tesla In National Inventors Hall Of Fame

Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame: Edith Clarke

Edith Clarke (National Women’s History Museum, YouTube)