Edith Clarke, an American mathematician and engineer, has achieved remarkable things in her lifetime, including being not only the first woman to be professionally employed as an electrical engineer in the United States but also the first female professor of electrical engineering in the country.
Clarke was born in Ellicott City, Maryland in 1883 and she had eight siblings. Although both of her parents passed away at the age of twelve, she used her inherited money to study mathematics and astronomy at Vassar College when she was eighteen. Later on, she went on to teach mathematics and physics at a private all-girls school in San Francisco, and then Marshall College in West Virginia.
Clarke enjoyed teaching, but she wanted to be an engineer and decided to enroll in the University of Wisconsin’s civil engineering program in 1911. After getting a summer job as a mathematical computing assistant at AT&T, she ended up staying full time at AT&T where she was assigned to calculate the first seven terms of an infinite series that represented a probability function. Eventually, she managed a group of women "computers" who made calculations for the Transmission and Protection Engineering Department during World War I and also studied radio at Hunter College and electrical engineering at Columbia University.
Around 1918, she left her job at AT&T in the year 1918 to study electrical engineering at MIT in Boston. She earned her master's degree in 1919 and became the first woman to be awarded an electrical engineering degree at that institution due to her thesis entitled "Behavior of a lumpy artificial transmission line as the frequency is indefinitely increased", which held high national importance as transmission lines were getting long, and the chances of systemic instability increased. After graduating, she accepted a job at General Electric where she worked for the next 26 years and also worked as a professor of physics at the Constantinople Women's College in Turkey.
After retiring from General Electric, she was appointed a full professor at the University of Texas and became the first female professor of electrical engineering in the country. She taught there until 1956.
During her time as a professor, Edith was the first woman elected as a Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now known as the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE). She also received the Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award "in recognition of her many original contributions to stability theory and circuit analysis.” in 1954.
On October 29, 1959, in Maryland, Edith Clarke passed away. Despite her passing, Edith managed to accomplish many things in her lifetime and is considered a pioneer for women in both engineering and computing. In his book "From Computer to Electrical Engineer - the Remarkable Career of Edith Clarke," Dr. James E. Brittain describes how Edith helped create methods that simplified complex problems and reduced the time spent in laborious calculations in solving problems in the design and operation of electrical power systems. Her efforts helped develop electromechanical aids to problem-solving. Given the time period, Edith Clarke’s accomplishments are inspiring due to her gender and field. As a woman in STEM, which is dominated by men, Clarke proved that women can also be just as successful with the opportunity to do so. As Dr. Brittain said, “her outstanding achievements provided an inspiring example for the next generation of women with aspirations to become career engineers."
- By Prisha Bhattacharyya
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