| Profession | Rocket Scientist |
| Born | Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada |
| Innovation | Developed innovative rocket propulsion systems |
| NJ Connection | Long time Princeton resident; worked for Wright Aeronautics and RCA |
When she attended the University of Manitoba not long before World War II, Yvonne Brill was told in no uncertain terms that because of her gender, she could not study engineering. Undaunted, she studied mathematics and chemistry instead.
Good move.
Yvonne Brill graduated at the top of her class and later earned a Masters in Chemistry from the University of Southern California.
Her academic performance earned her a job at Douglas Aircraft in California where she began working on the first satellite system designs which would become the foundation for the RAND Corporation.
“No one had the right degrees back then, so it didn’t matter,” she said later. “I didn’t have the engineering but the engineers didn’t have the chemistry and math.”
During the 1940’s, it is believed Yvonne Brill was the only woman in the United States working on rocket science.
Brill developed the propulsion system (for which she earned a patent) that keeps communications satellites from slipping out of their orbits. Her system is now the industry standard.
She worked for two prominent New Jersey companies - Wright Aeronautical and RCA - where she contributed to propulsion systems for NASA missions.
Among her many awards, ironically, was the prestigious American Association of Engineering Societies’ John Fritz Medal, despite never officially getting an engineer’s license.
She also won the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation presented by President Barack Obama in 2011.
When Yvonne Brill was inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame in 2010, two of her fellow inductees were Spencer Silver and Arthur Fry, inventors of the Post-It note.
In its article, the Washington Post noted it took two men to invent an adhesive stationary, but only one woman to figure out how to keep satellites in orbit around the earth.
