Famous Women Engineers in History – Book 6: Esther Conwell – Theorist and Mentor
FREE to IEEE Members
Non-Members: $2.99
It did not deter Conwell. Despite often facing discrimination against women in the sciences, she went on to have significant impact on several industries.
Conwell had a 45-year career doing foundational basic research in industry, working for Bell Laboratories, Sylvania/GTE, and Xerox. She also did a research stint at MIT and, upon retirement from Xerox, spent another almost quarter century conducting research at the University of Rochester.
During her career, Conwell made significant contributions to scientific theory that lay the foundation for modern electronics, long-distance industries and Xerox’s innovative products in the 1980s and 1990s.
For her Master’s thesis at the University of Rochester, Conwell derived a theory of the scattering of electrons by impurities in germanium. She applied her theory to a data set produced at Purdue University. Later called The Conwell-Weisskopf Theory, her theory explained the movement of electrons in semiconductors, due to impurity-related scattering. It led to an understanding of how electrons work in transistors (which would be invented several years after Conwell’s theoretical work). Conwell’s theory was foundational for the creation and expansion of the electronics industry.
During her lifetime she obtained four patents, wrote several books, and published more than 200 papers. Her book, High Field Transport in Semiconductors, was published in 1967; and it became the authoritative text in the field. Conwell was still publishing when she died in 2014, at age 92.
The National Association of Science and Technology Medals Foundation summed it up nicely on its website, posting “Conwell churned out a series of discoveries that set many parts of the modern world in motion.”
Conwell received her Master’s in physics from the University of Rochester in 1945. After a few years teaching at Brooklyn College, she decided to pursue her Ph.D. at University of Chicago, working with astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, and assisting Enrico Fermi.
Conwell received her Ph.D. in 1948, at age 26. She would later lament, “Having a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, any guy would figure on getting a nice professorship at a good university, but in physics in the early 1950s, there was no such thing for women — and no such thing for me.” Conwell spent most of the next 50 years doing research for corporations.
While at Bell Laboratories, Conwell co-authored a review paper with William Shockley, who later co-invented the transistor. The paper established her reputation as someone with an extensive understanding of the complexity of electrons and holes in semiconductors.
After Bell Labs, Conwell worked for 20 years at Sylvania (eventually bought by GTE), where she studied the effect of high electric fields on the transport of “hot” (or highly energetic) electrons in semiconductors.
Conwell was a member of IEEE, and in 1980 was named an IEEE Fellow, “for contributions to semiconductor theory, particularly transport in both low and high electric fields.” In 1997, she became the first woman to receive the IEEE Edison Medal “for fundamental contributions to transport theory in semiconductor and organic conductors, and their application to the semiconductor, electronic copying, and printing industries.”
In 2002, Conwell was included in Discovery Magazine’s list of the top 50 women in science. In 2010, President Barack Obama presented her the National Medal of Science, in a White House Ceremony. She also received several awards for mentoring graduate and undergraduate students, especially women.
When Conwell died in 2014, Todd Krause, chair of the University of Rochester’s Chemistry Department, remarked in her obituary, “Conwell has served as an inspiration to women scientists around the globe… She was driven by her science. It really was at her core, her soul. She was all about discovery.”
Esther Conwell, Theorist and Mentor is the 6th e-book in IEEE-USA’s Famous Women Engineers in History series. It is available for free at the IEEE-USA Shop for IEEE members; non-members pay $2.99.
Other books in the Famous Women in Engineering History Series include:
- Hedy Lamarr: Inventor Extraordinaire and Hollywood Star
- Edith Clarke, Trailblazer in Electrical Engineering
- Lillian Gilbreth, Transforming Work
- Kate Gleason, Leading the Way
- Judith Resnik, Engineer, Astronaut, American Hero
IEEE-USA Publishing Manager and Editor, IEEE-USA E-Books, Georgia C. Stelluto initiated and edits the series. Author Paul Lief Rosengren has written all of the books in this series.
