“These Engineers Wear Lipstick!” How’s that for a cringeworthy headline? Just one example of the hurdles women in engineering have had to overcome to be taken seriously in their profession.
In the 21st century, it is not at all unusual to find women engaged in all fields of engineering – civil, military, chemical, aerospace, computer, electrical, mechanical, nuclear, and more. But it wasn’t always that way. Prior to World War II, women in this field were a rarity.
In the 19th century, women who performed engineering work often had academic training in mathematics or science, although many of them were still not eligible to graduate with a degree in engineering. For instance, Tabitha Babbitt (1784—1853?) was a toolmaker and inventor living in the Shaker community in Harvard, Massachusetts. Babbitt is purported to have invented, in 1813, the first circular saw for use in a sawmill. There is some dispute over the accuracy of this “fact”: some believe it was patented by others when they found out about her invention, others say that saw was invented at the Mt. Lebanon Shaker village. Babbitt does share the invention of cut nails with Eli Whitney and is credited for inventing a process for manufacturing false teeth.
PIONEERS IN WOMEN ENGINEERING IN CAMBRIDGE
This piece focuses on women engineers in Cambridge. But we can’t talk about women engineers in Cambridge without first talking about the Institute of Technology– which was first located on Boyleston St. in Boston. William Barton Rogers (1804-1882) had been a professor of “natural philosophy” and chemistry at the College of William and Mary and had also worked on the first geological survey of the state of Virginia. Rogers moved to Boston in 1853 and hatched his idea of a “new polytechnic institute.” MIT was founded in 1861 and its first classes began in 1865. Even before the Institute of Technology moved from Boston to Cambridge in 1916, it was the place to go if one planned to study engineering.
ELLEN SWALLOW RICHARDS (1842-1911)
The first woman to graduate from MIT with an engineering degree was Ellen Swallow Richards. She was admitted as a special student at MIT by vote of the faculty in 1870, the same year that she received her A.B. from Vassar.
Her special student status at MIT did not, however “establish a precedent for the general admission of females.” (https://archivesspace.mit.edu/agents/people/975). Swallow later applied for formal admission to MIT and in 1873 she earned a B. S. in Science (chemistry)—the same year that she also earned an M. S. of Arts from Vassar. Her thesis for MIT was titled “Notes on Some Sulpharsenites and Sulphantimonites from Colorado.” Impressive. Two years later, in 1875, she married the chairman of the MIT Mine Engineering Department, Robert Hallowell Richards (1844–1945).
It appears that the main reason for excluding women from studying at MIT was the lack of laboratory space and residential accommodations. By 1876, Swallow had raised enough money for the creation of the MIT Woman’s Laboratory, “established to afford better opportunities for the scientific education of women” (Technology Review, June 1910). Swallows Richards had a long and illustrious career at MIT, as Instructor in Chemistry and Mineralogy and, for 27 years, as an Instructor in Sanitary Chemistry. Her work in sanitary engineering led to the development of the field of home economics, which she is credited as having founded. She was a consultant in chemistry and a water analyst for the Massachusetts State Board of Health, the nutrition expert for the U. S. Department of Agriculture, and co- founded (with Marion Talbot, class of 1888) of the American Association of University Women.
Between 1881 and 1890, more than 100 women enrolled at MIT, and 19 earned S. B. degrees. However, the U. S. lagged behind other countries in graduating women engineers: a 1909 article in the Boston Sunday Herald (March 28) pointed out that Russia was far ahead of the U. S. in this statistic. That same year, at least 40 women qualified as engineers from the St. Petersburg Higher Technical College program.
Women encompassed around 1% of the student body at MIT until the arrival of WWII. By 2023, legions of women engineers have graduated from MIT (see below). Those mentioned here are just a small representative handful of successful women in engineering. Among those prominent engineers following in Ellen Swallow Richards footsteps were:
EDITH CLARK (1883-1959) M.S. MIT 1919
Edith Clark was the first women to earn a Master’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT and the first woman to hold a professional position as an electrical engineer in the U. S. She worked at General Electric, as a Professor of Physics at the Constantinople Women’s College in Turkey, and became the first female professor of engineering at the University of Texas. Clark invented the “graphical calculator, which solved problems with electric power transmission of data.” It was patented in 1925. Edith Clark holds the distinction of being the first woman to present a paper to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.
To quote Clarke: “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.”
LYDIA GOULD WELD (1878-1962)
Lydia Gould Weld attended MIT from 1898 to 1903 and earned the S.B. in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. Weld was the first woman to earn an engineering degree from MIT and later became the second woman member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Even as women progressed in engineering in the early 20th century, they still experienced many of the same roadblocks that impeded their progress in the late 19th century, as the Boston Herald pointed out on July 1, 1928:
WWII AND THE NEED FOR ENGINEERS
With men leaving engineering jobs for the armed forces, World War II provided new opportunities for women in engineering. In fact, the need for engineers was urgent. All the same, newspaper reporting on the phenomenon of women engineers continued to express concern that women were “taking over jobs held by men.”
The number of women engineers graduating from MIT in Cambridge post WWII is too numerous to list in detail. This year, in 2022–2023, women at MIT account for 48% of undergraduates (2,244) and 39% of graduate students (2,830). Those below are just a sample of women engineers with an association with Cambridge:
MILDRED DRESSELHAUS (1930-2017), “The Queen of Carbon”
After graduating from Hunter College (1951), Dresselhaus spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar and later earned her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. In 1967, she was appointed to the MIT faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer science. In 1983, she was also appointed to the Faculty of the Physics Department. Two years later, she received MIT’s highest honor and was named Institute Professor (1985). She was also the first woman to win a National Medal of Science in engineering. Her research and teaching focused on magneto-optics, the structure of carbon, carbon nanotubes, and graphene.
SHEILA WIDNALL (1938-)
Sheila Widnall majored in Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, receiving her B.S. (1960), her M.S. (1961), and her Ph.D. (1964) in that field. Her research focused on “fluid mechanics and the aerodynamics of high speed vehicles.” In 1979, she was the first woman appointed to the faculty of the MIT School of Engineering. She was also the first woman to serve as Secretary of the Air Force having been appointed by President Clinton, a position she served in from 1993-1997. Afterwards, she served as Associate Provost of MIT, and was ultimately appointed Institute Professor Emerita. Her awards, positions, and achievements are too numerous to list. Widnall was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2003.
SHIRLEY ANN JACKSON (1946-)
Jackson was one of the first black women to receive her B.S. in theoretical physics from MIT (1968). In 1973, she was the first African American woman to receive a doctorate from MIT, and the second nationwide to receive a doctorate in nuclear physics.
In 1995, President Clinton appointed Jackson as Chairwoman of the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In 1999, she became the 18th President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
MARGARET HAMILTON (1936-)
Hamilton received her BA in mathematics with a minor in philosophy in from Earlham College in 1958. Moving to Cambridge with her husband (James Cox Hamilton) in 1960, she joined MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. She then moved on to MIT’s Instrumentation Lab (now the independent Draper Lab) where she was the director of the Software Engineering Division. In 1961, the lab contracted with NASA “to develop the Apollo program’s guidance system. For her work during this period, Hamilton has been credited with popularizing the concept of software engineering.” (https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/)
The national Society of Women Engineers was founded in 1950. But it wasn’t until 1963, with the opening of MIT’s McCormick Hall, that women finally had a dormitory on the Cambridge campus.
Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer, Kathleen M. Fox.
SOURCES
https://alum.mit.edu/slice/first-female-engineer-inducted-inventors-hall-fame
https://blog.isa.org/mechanical-engineering
Cambridge Public Library’s Historic Cambridge Newspaper Collection
Genealogybank
https://innovation.mit.edu/interactive-timeline-women-at-mit/
Newspapers.com
https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/medalofscience50/dresselhaus.jsp
https://prabook.com/web/tabitha.babbitt/1837435
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/
Technology Review June 1911, MIT Archives and Special Collections (p 368)
Wikipedia
The Women of M.I.T., 1871 to 1941: Who They Were, What They Achieved by Marilynn Arsey Bever ’76 (MIT 1976)