Willie Hobbs Moore, the subject of the seventh installment of IEEE-USA’s Famous Women Engineers in History series, broke barriers in academia, as the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in a science (Physics) in the United States.
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Author: Paul Lief Rosengren
Willie Hobbs Moore broke barriers in academia, as the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in a science (Physics) in the United States, almost 100 years after the first Black male to earn a Ph.D. (also in Physics). When speaking at a University of Michigan symposium on Moore’s life, Dr. Donnell Walton, a physicist at the Corning West Technology Center, noted, “Intelligent Black women at that time were pushed to be nurses and teachers.” However, Moore worked in industry and conducted research at the University of Michigan, before joining Ford Motor Company. She became an expert at Japanese quality systems and engineering design, eventually serving as a Ford executive.
