As the first woman to be inducted into the Inventor’s Hall of Fame, earn her masters in electrical engineering at MIT, hold an official position as an electrical engineer and a professor of engineering, and much more, Edith Clarke is truly one of a kind. Not only did she force open doors for female engineers, but she also made significant waves in the electrical engineering industry by deriving formulas and standardizing her field. Just who was Edith Clarke, and how did she achieve so much in just a lifetime?
Born in 1883 in Maryland, Clarke began her academic career studying mathematics at Vassar College. After graduating, she taught math at two different schools before pursuing her lifelong dream of engineering and enrolling as a civil engineering student at the University of Wisconsin. Although she had the credentials for much more esteemed jobs, Clarke could only find work as a computor at AT&T.
Clarke then decided to leave her job at AT&T to pursue higher education at MIT. There, she worked towards an electrical engineering master’s degree. Even having received this degree, she still wasn’t taken seriously and had to settle for another job as a computor at General Electric. She took advantage of this period by inventing the graphical calculator in her free time, whose initial applications were meant to help with electrical engineering problems. Her patent for this groundbreaking invention was approved in 1925, and today the graphing calculator is still an essential tool in numerous mathematical and scientific fields. Clarke eventually proved herself at General Electric and was promoted to the position of an official engineer. She retired in 1945 having been the first woman named a Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.
Post-retirement from GE, Clarke decided to take up a position as a professor of engineering at UT Austin in 1947, where she taught for the next ten years. She passed away in 1959 after decades of groundbreaking work in her field.
In 2015, Clarke was inducted into the Inventor’s Hall of Fame, further solidifying her legacy as one of the most influential figures in her field. It’s important to remember that Clarke, although vastly overqualified for many of her jobs throughout the years, continued to excel and create waves in her field. Her accomplishments despite the discriminatory barriers she faced will inspire women in STEM for years to come.
https://alum.mit.edu/slice/first-female-engineer-inducted-inventors-hall-fame
https://edisontechcenter.org/Clarke.html
https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/educ/exhibits/womenshallfame/html/clarke.html
