Born: Unknown, United States (assumed)
Died: Unknown
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following was written by Nina Baker and is excerpted from the book From Alchemy to Transport Phenomena: A Global History of Women in Chemical Engineering.
Rice Institute, Texas, although not at first all that welcoming to women students, had its mind changed by its first female chemical engineering student, Anna Lay Turner, who graduated in 1929. We know much fascinating detail about how she fought to get in and worked hard to succeed both at Rice and in her industrial career, whilst raising a family, due to a detailed interview in Sallyport, the alumni magazine. Her wartime work, at the behest of the Navy, was overseeing the production process for vital synthetic rubber – a post for which she had to battle for equal pay. The process was so complicated to explain to the mainly non-English-speaking workers that she designed a primer, which depicted the entire process step-by-step with cartoon characters.