The first woman to obtain a master's degree in electrical engineering and the first teacher.

Edith Clarke was the daughter of Susan Dorsey Owings and John Ridgely Clarke. She was orphaned at the age of twelve and was raised by her older sister. He used his inheritance to study mathematics and astronomy at Vassar University, graduating in 1908.

After college, Clarke taught math and physics at a private school in San Francisco and at Marshall University. He then spent some time studying civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but left to become a human calculator at AT&T in 1912. He computed for George Campbell, who applied mathematical methods to electrical transmission problems long distance While at AT&T, he studied electrical engineering at Columbia University on the night shift.

In 1918, Clarke enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the following year she became the first woman to earn a master's degree in electrical engineering from MIT.

Unable to find work as an engineer, she went to work for General Electric as a computer supervisor in the turbine engineering department. In his spare time, he invented the Clarke calculator, a simple graphing calculator that solved equations involving electrical current, voltage, and impedance in electrical transmission lines. The device could solve linear equations involving hyperbolic functions ten times faster than previous methods. He applied for a patent for the calculator in 1921 which was granted in 1925.

In 1921, still unable to secure a job as an engineer, she left GE to teach physics at the Women's University of Constantinople in Turkey. The following year, she was rehired by GE as an electrical engineer in the Central Station Engineering Department.

Clarke retired from General Electric in 1945.

Her expertise in mathematics helped her achieve fame in her field. On February 8, 1926, he showed the use of hyperbolic functions to calculate the maximum power a line could carry without instability. In 1943, Edith Clarke wrote an influential textbook in the field of power engineering, Circuit Analysis of AC Power Systems, based on her lecture notes by GE engineers.

In 1947, she joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, making her the first female professor of electrical engineering in the country. He taught for ten years and retired in 1957.

In an interview with the Daily Texan newspaper on March 14, 1948, she said: “There is no demand for women engineers, as such, as there is for female doctors; but there is always demand for anyone who can do a good job."

Edith Clarke was the first female engineer to be co-opted into the Tau Beta Pi honorary engineering fraternity. In 1948, Clarke was the first woman member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. In 1954, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Society of Women Engineers.

In 2015, Clarke was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 2019, she was portrayed in a mural at the Vicente Miralles Segarra Telecommunication Museum at the Polytechnic University of Valencia as part of the celebration of International Women's Day.

Source: Wikipedia