Clarke, Edith

Clarke, Edith

(1883–1959) electrical engineer; born in Howard County, Md. Using her inheritance to attend Vassar, she went on to study engineering at the University of Wisconsin and then worked for American Telephone and Telegraph Co. (1912–18) before becoming the first woman to receive an M.S. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1919). She worked at General Electric from 1922–45, focusing on large electrical power systems, and she developed a calculating device that predicted the electrical behavior of these systems. She postponed her retirement on a farm in Maryland by teaching at the University of Texas: Austin (1947–56).