Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau was a chemical engineer who designed the first commercial penicillin production plant.
Background
Margaret Hutchinson was born in 1910 in Houston, Texas, the daughter of a clothing store owner, and married William C. Rousseau, a co-worker, who was later a chemical engineering lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
Education
She received her Bachelor of Science degree from Rice Institute in 1932 and her Doctor of Science degree in chemical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1937, the first woman to earn a doctorate in the subject in the United States of America.
Career
They had one son. She died 12 January 2000 at her home in Weston, Massachusetts. She also worked on the development of high-octane gasoline for aviation fuel. Her later work included improved distillation column design and plants for the production of ethylene glycol and glacial acetic acid.
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She retired in 1961 and became an overseer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
In 1983 she was the first female recipient of the prestigious Founders Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Walter Reuther Library Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau, Portrait (1955)
Walter Reuther Library Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau, Portrait (1961).
Membership
She was also the first female member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.