My Mum is an Engineer…

In 1964 Jean Anscombe completed her Engineering degree from Cambridge University. There were few women studying engineering then and for one year she was the only female undergraduate. There weren’t many women in the rest of the University, but she found enough rowers to fill a boat, and they beat Oxford on the Isis!

This photo shows Mum next to Agecroft Power Station near Manchester. After graduating, she was an apprentice at the Central Electricity Generating Board, when regulations prevented her from working nights. She then worked at Agecroft as an Efficiency Engineer from 1967 to 1969.

Later, she joined my father at Lancaster University, working in the Operations Research Department. In 1984 she co-authored a book ‘How to write Simulations using Microcomputers’ about modelling systems and operations. In today’s world of digital twins, it’s hard to remember how new these ideas were back then.

Mum also taught me to write software. First in BASIC on our Commodore PET (see earlier post) and later in machine code. She wrote a computing course for my class at our tiny Church of England School in rural Lancashire. I use her insights into design and planning even today.

In later years, Mum lectured Engineering undergraduates at Lancaster University and worked for a ‘Teaching Company’. This applied her OR experience to planning complex manufacturing processes in wallpaper production. Later she consulted for the Buildings Research Establishment, analysing test data on construction materials.

In many families an engineering Mum would be unusual. But her mother was also an engineer (see my INWED post last year). Mum joined the Women’s Engineering Society as a teenager after her mother introduced her to them. And my sister is also a Chartered Civil Engineer!

The cooling towers of Agecroft are long gone which is better for the planet. But Women Engineers are no longer as unusual as they once were. Let’s celebrate them!