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Chemical engineering—designing big plants with towering smokestacks, huge tanks, blazing furnaces, and mazes of pipes—was long considered a “man’s job.” Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau changed this. In 1937 she became the first American woman to earn a doctorate in chemical engineering (from MIT). Before World War II Rousseau designed plants for making aviation fuel. During the war she designed some of the earliest production plants for penicillin.
In 1945 she became the first female member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). She earned the highest award of this institute (the Founders Award) in 1983 and, as of 2003, remains the only woman ever to have done so.
About Her Life
Click here to read a biographical sketch of Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau |
