Trailblazers in Engineering: Profiles of 10 Successful Women Engineers

Women in history who wanted to work in engineering have faced huge resistance, prejudice and even discrimination. Even when women did achieve their ambitions, often their achievements went unrecognised in a male-dominated world. But female engineers of today owe these women a huge debt – for their courage, resilience and perseverance, for the networks they formed and the perceptions they helped to change. As we celebrate International Women in Engineering Day, reading these stories of famous female engineers, inventors and mathematicians is fascinating, moving and inspiring. 

Ada Lovelace

Algorithms weren’t invented by Google. They have been around for hundreds of years, but one of the first computer algorithms was invented by a female mathematician, Ada Lovelace (1815-1852). She was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron but is remembered in her own right for her work on an early mechanical computer called the Analytical Engine, designed by the inventor Charles Babbage. She developed an algorithm that could make complex calculations, thought to be the first published algorithm designed for a computer. Lovelace was something of a society celebrity in her day, but it wasn’t until the 1950s, a century after her death, that her huge contribution to computing was recognised.

Emily Warren Roebling

Emily Warren Roebling (1843-1903) did not train as an engineer, but she had a huge role in the building of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Her husband, Washington Roebling, was the bridge’s chief engineer, but when he was struck down with ill health, it was Emily who largely took over. She became an expert in stress analysis and cable construction, and to all intents and purposes became the chief engineer on the project. When the bridge was opened in 1883, Emily was the first person to cross it, holding a live rooster in her lap as a sign of victory. Even though the commemorative plaque omits Emily’s name, the bridge was hailed by one US congressman as “an everlasting monument to the sacrificing devotion of a woman and of her capacity for that higher education from which she has been too long disbarred.”

Edith Clarke

Edith Clarke (1883-1959) truly was a pioneer. Not only did she invent the Clarke calculator, one of the first graphing calculators, but was the first woman to work as an electrical engineer in the US, the first to deliver a paper at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and its first female Fellow. Throughout much of her career, she experienced rejection and found opportunities limited for women in civil engineering and electrical engineering. Clarke was initially not allowed to work as an electrical engineer at General Electric until they finally realised the error of their ways. 

Clarke said in 1948: “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”.

Hilda Counts

‘We have not now, have never had, and do not expect to have in the near future, any women students registered in our engineering department’. Hilda Counts (1893-1989) received countless letters like these when she was trying to form the American Society of Women Engineers and Architects in 1919. She persevered, despite the resistance of male academics, and the professional association she established became the inspiration for the Society of Women Engineers, a US body which is still going strong today. Counts was the first woman to graduate in electrical engineering from the University of Colorado, and her efforts in creating a female engineering network make her a true trailblazer.

Elsie Eaves

Elsie Eaves (1898-1983) was America’s first female civil engineer, and the first woman to be accepted as a full member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. She was at the University of Colorado at the same time as Hilda Counts, and was a founding member of the Society of Women Engineers in 1950. As a structural engineer, Eaves worked on many major infrastructure projects, including the Hoover Dam, specialising in cost engineering for transport and housing. She contributed to the Engineering News-Record, a trade publication, for 37 years. In later life, Eaves became a mentor and inspiration for young female engineers.

Mary Blade

What must it have been like to be the only woman on an engineering course or the only female academic on campus? Mary Blade (1913-1994) would have known exactly those feelings, being the first woman to get a degree in engineering from the University of Utah (her parents were stunned when they heard Mary wouldn’t be majoring in home economics) and the only woman on the faculty in the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a private college in New York. There Blade held the position of professor of mechanical engineering from 1946 to 1978 and was another key figure in the development of the Society of Women Engineers.

Hedy Lamarr

It is one of the most unlikely stories in engineering history. Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000) was a glamorous Hollywood movie star of the 1930s and 1940s, acting in films alongside James Stewart, Clark Gable and Judy Garland, amongst others. But Lamarr had other talents and used the downtime on film sets to advance her knowledge of engineering and work on inventions. Most famously, in the early years of World War II she filed a patent for a system of ‘frequency hopping’ that would prevent torpedo guidance systems from being jammed by radio operators. The invention was used by the US Navy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and her contribution to this field of spread spectrum technology is now recognised as hugely significant.

Cicely Thompson

After taking a degree in mathematics at Girton College, Cambridge, Cicely Thompson (1919-2008) switched to electrical engineering early in her career. She made her name in nuclear engineering. Thompson was on the teams that designed Hinckley Point B and Dungeness nuclear power stations in the 1950s and 1960s and was awarded an MBE for her work in the nuclear power industry. She was twice President of the Women’s Engineering Society and was very much an early ambassador for her profession. Thompson delivered the Verena Holmes lectures around the UK in 1972, which encouraged young women and girls to take up careers in engineering.

Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson (1919-2020) wanted to be a mathematician from an early age, but as an African-American woman had everything barring her way. Her story is one of individual brilliance that could not be ignored. Johnson worked at NASA during the space program, specialising in orbital mechanics. She did incredibly important work, calculating the trajectory and launch windows of spacecraft during numerous missions, including the first manned US space flights and the Apollo 11 moon landings. All at a time of intense racial segregation and discrimination: before Johnson, no woman had been allowed to have her name printed on a NASA report they had contributed to.

She really did go where no woman had gone before.

Yvonne Clark

Another woman who experienced significant prejudice in her career was Yvonne Clark (1929-2019). Her ambition was to become a pilot, but she was not allowed to enrol in a mechanical drawing class at high school because of her gender. Clark was accepted at the University of Louisville but was unable to attend due to segregation. She became the first woman to graduate in mechanical engineering from Howard University, and the first female engineering faculty member at Tennessee State University, becoming a professor and twice chairing the mechanical engineering department. During her career, she also worked at NASA.