Born: 18 July 1908, United States
Died: 22 September 1997
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
American mathematician, statistician and transportation economist Beatrice Aitchison directed the Transport Economics Division of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and went on to became the top woman in the U.S. Postal Service and the first policy-level appointee there.
After earning her bachelor’s degree from Goucher College in 1928, she worked for a year as an actuary before earning her master’s in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University in 1931 and a Ph.D. in 1933, followed by a second master’s in economics in 1937 from the University of Oregon. In between, she lectured in statistics at American University in Washington, D.C. from 1934 to 1935, and worked for the Depression-era Works Progress Administration in 1936. After returning to Washington, D.C. to lecture at American University and for the United States Department of Agriculture and the Interstate Commerce Commission, she went back to the University of Oregon to teach economics from 1939 to 1942.
From 1942 to 1951, Aitchison was a statistician and then a transportation economist with the Interstate Commerce Commission. She returned to lecturing at American University from 1942 to 1944, and consulted with the Office of Defense Transportation during World War II. She led the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Transportation Transport Economics Division from 1951 until it was dissolved in 1953. but this division was eliminated in 1953, then worked for the Post Office until 1971. She became Director of Transportation Research in the Bureau of Transportation of the United States Postal Service, making her both the top woman at the postal service and “the first woman to be appointed to a policy level postal position”. Aitchison “was one of the highest ranking women in the federal service” when she retired in 1971.
Aitchison received one of the United States Civil Service Commission’s first Federal Woman’s Awards in 1961, chosen from a field of more than 25,000. This gave Aitchison leverage to advocate for President Lyndon Johnson to write an executive order banning sex discrimination in the U.S. government. Aitchison was elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1956 “for pioneering work in the development and application of statistical methods for research and analysis in traffic and transportation.” In 1970, she won the National Civil Service League’s Career Service Award in 1970.