List of Achievements Suitable for Milestones featuring Women
From IEEE Milestones Wiki
A suggestive list of technical achievements by women in IEEE's fields of interest which might be suitable for proposal as milestones. The Region number where the achievement took place is shown. This is by no means all of them, nor does an appearance on this list guarantee approval. The technical area/society given is for suggestion only; it does not restrict the achievement to that society. Multiple societies may cosponsor milestone proposals. Please feel free to suggest others to ieee-history@ieee.org -- or even better -- propose an achievement as a milestone. Please consult the Milestone Guidelines for more information on the milestone process.
| Date | Milestone | Associated woman | Location | IEEE Region | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1748 | Publication of Analytical Institutions | Maria Agnesi | Italy | 8 | |
| 1840 | Theoretical computer programming | Ada Augusta | London, England | 8 | |
| 1881 | First meeting of American Association of University Women | Ellen Swallow Richards | Boston, MA | 1 | |
| 1886 | Electric Automatic Dishwasher | Josephine Cochrane | Shelbyville, IL | 3 | US Patent #355139A |
| 1893 | First woman to earn degree in EE | Bertha Lamme | Ohio State University | 2 | |
| 1895 | Explanation of electric arc | Hertha Ayrton | London, UK | 8 | Also first woman to read a paper before the Royal Society; first woman member of the IEE (2nd was in 1958); first woman to win Hughes Medal (2nd was in 2018, and only two to date; first paper was in The Electrician; published her book in 1902 |
| 1898 | Development of theory of radioactivity | Marie Skłodowska Curie | Paris, France | 8 | Also later invented portable xray machine |
| 1912 | Electric water purifier | Ada Henry Van Pelt | Los Angeles, CA | 6 | US Patent #1020001A |
| 1913 | All-metal poultry-cooling rack | Mary Engle Pennington | Pennsylvania | 2 | |
| 1919 | First Women's Engineering Society Meeting | Laura Annie Willson, Rachel Parsons, Margaret, Lady Moir | Hertfordshire, UK | 8 | |
| 1919 | First successful exhaust muffler for airplane engines | Eldorado Jones | Moline, IL | 4 | Is this an IEEE achievement? |
| 1921 | Graphical Calculator for power transmission computations | Edith Clarke | GE Laboratory, Schenectady, NY | 1 | |
| 1921 | Microelectrode | Ida Henrietta Hyde | University of Kansas | 5 | |
| 1925 | Miniature pH electrode | Phyllis Margaret Tookey Kerridge | London, UK | 8 | |
| 1932 | Movie and theater incandescent bulb with maneuverability, reliability and luminosity | Maude Adams | GE Laboratory Schenectady | 1 | Patents: 1,884,957 and 1,963,949 |
| 1935 | Non-reflective coating for glass | Katherine Burr Blodgett | GE Laboratory, Schenectady, NY | 1 | Is this an IEEE event? She was a chemist, but it had electronic applications; also what was happening at GE in 1930s that Clarke and Blodgett were both there? |
| 1936 | Discovery of ring nebulae in Milky Way | Muriel Mussells Seyfert | Harvard | 1 | |
| 1939 | Solar-powered water desalination machine | Maria Telkes | MIT | 1 | This was not an electronic device, but she went on to become an important figure in early solar power |
| 1945 | Sapphire gramophone stylus | Marie Killick | London, UK | 8 | |
| 1949 | "Mechanical Encyclopedia" | Ángela Ruiz Robles | Galicia, Spain | 8 | Mechanical, but it is an information device |
| 1950 | First SWE Meeting | Beatrice Hicks | Cooper Union's Green Engineering Camp | 1 | |
| 1953 | Hot die stamp method to create printed circuits | Elise Frances Harmon | Aerovox Corporation, New Bedford, MA | 1 | US Patent #2656570A |
| 1954 | Stored program control for telephone exchanges | Erna Schneider Hoover | Bell Labs, NJ | 1 | |
| 1959 | Oramics drawn sound | Daphne Oram | Kent, UK | 8 | |
| 1960 | Brain Research Institute Data Processing Laboratory | Thelma Estrin | Los Angeles | 6 | |
| 1966 | First CCTV-based security system | Marie Van Brittan Brown | Queens, NYC | 1 | U.S. Patent 3,482,037 |
| 1966 | Gigacycle signal generator | Betsy Ancker-Johnson | Boeing Science Research Lab, Seattle, WA | 6 | U.S. Patent #3,287,659 |
| 1967 | Hydrazine resistojet satellite propulsion system | Yvonne Brill | RCA Lab, Princeton, NJ | 1 | Is this an IEEE achievement? She was a chemist, but important for satellites |
| 1968 | Switched-On Bach | Wendy Carlos | New York | 1 | |
| 1969 | Apollo flight software | Margaret Hamilton | Cambridge, MA | 1 | |
| 1969 | Publication of Computer Science: A First Course | Alexandra Illmer Forsythe | New York | 1 | |
| 1970 | Contributions to radio science in the polar regions | Irene Peden | Antarctica | ? | |
| 1977 | First microelectronic multi-channel cochlear implant | Ingeborg J. Hochmair-Desoyer | Vienna, Austria | 8 | With husband Erwin Hochmair |
| 1978 | "Illusion Transmitter" | Valerie Thomas | NASA (Goddard?) | 2 | US Patent #4229761A |
| 1978 | General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory | Ruzena Bajcsy | University of Pennsylvania | 2 | |
| 1980 | Graphical adventure games | Roberta Williams | Simi Valley, CA | 6 | |
| 1980 | VLSI | Lynn Conway | Xerox PARC | 6 | |
| 1984 | "Blissymbol Printer" (for severely handicapped individuals) | Rachel Zimmerman Brachman | London, Ontario | 7 | |
| 1985 | Spanning Tree Protocol | Radia Perlman | DEC, Maynard, MA | 1 | This is the basis of IEEE Standard 802.1d! |
| 1986 | Daubechies Wavelets | Ingrid Daubechies | New York | 1 | |
| 1986 | Music Mouse composition software | Laurie Spiegel | New York | 1 | |
| 1986 | Laser phaco ultrasound and laser method and apparatus for removing cataract lenses | Patricia Bath | New York | 1 | Patents: 6,544,254 B1; 5,843,071; 5,919,186; 6,083,192 |
| 1986 | Precise modelling of Earth's shape | Gladys West | Dahlgren, VA | 2 | |
| 1987 | Optical tweezers and their application to biological systems | Donna Stricklan | Bell Labs, New Jersey Coast Section | 1 | with Arthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou |
| 1988 | Silicon retina | Misha Mahowald | CalTech | 6 | |
| 1989 | Holographic video system | Mary Lou Jepsen | MIT Media Lab | 1 | Later co-invented "One Laptop per Child" $100 computer |
| 1992 | Prediction of band structures of carbon nanotubes | Mildred Dresselhaus | MIT | 1 | |
| 1992 | Semiconductor saturable absorber mirror | Ursula Keller | Switzerland | 8 | |
| 1995 | Rescue and Disaster Recovery Robots | Robin Murphy | Colorado School of Mines, Univ S. Florida | 5 |
