Pioneering engineer, shattered the glass ceiling for women in this field

As a teenager, Beatrice Alice Hicks was so fascinated watching the construction of the George Washington Bridge and the Empire State Building, she decided to become an engineer.

Friends, classmates and teachers tried to discourage her from pursuing a career considered unacceptable for a woman in the early 20th Century. But Hicks persisted and graduated from the Newark College of Engineering (now NJIT) in 1939, one of two women in a class of 900. 

She would later earn a Masters from the Stevens Institute in physics.

Everything Hicks did blazed a new trail for women. She became the first woman hired as an engineer by Western Electric. She later owned and operated Newark Controls, her father’s company.

She was awarded numerous patents including one for a molecular density scanner and one for a gas density switch utilized by NASA on the Apollo moon missions.

She helped found, and served as the first president of, the Society of Women Engineers. There were 60 members at its inception. There are 16,000 today.

She was named Women of the Year in Business by Mademoiselle Magazine in 1952. She was one of the First women to join the National Academy of Engineers in 1978 and she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2002.