Edith Clarke
| Edith Clarke | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
February 10, 1883 Howard County, Maryland |
| Died | October 29, 1959 (aged 76) |
| Residence | Massachusetts, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Electrical Engineering |
| Institutions |
General Electric University of Texas at Austin |
| Alma mater |
Vassar College Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Notable awards | National Inventors Hall of Fame |
Edith Clarke (February 10, 1883 – October 29, 1959) was the first female electrical engineer and the first female professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She specialized in electrical power system analysis and wrote Circuit Analysis of A-C Power Systems.
Edith Clarke was born February 10, 1883, in Howard County, Maryland to John Ridgely Clarke and Susan Dorsey Owings, one of nine children. After being orphaned at age 12, she was raised by her older sister. She used her inheritance to study mathematics and astronomy at Vassar College, where she graduated in 1908.
After college, Clarke taught mathematics and physics at a private school in San Francisco and at Marshall College. She then spent some time studying civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but left to become a "computer" at AT&T in 1912. She computed for George Campbell, who applied mathematical methods to the problems of long-distance electrical transmissions. While at AT&T, she studied electrical engineering at Columbia University by night.
In 1918, Clarke enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the following year she became the first woman to earn an M.S. in electrical engineering from MIT.
Unable to find work as an engineer, she went to work for General Electric as a supervisor of computers in the Turbine Engineering Department. In her spare time, she invented the Clarke calculator, a simple graphical device that solved equations involving electric current, voltage and impedance in power transmission lines. The device could solve line equations involving hyperbolic functions ten times faster than previous methods. She filed a patent for the calculator in 1921 and it was granted in 1925.
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