Smart Scientist Constance Tipper – female pioneer in engineering
Constance Tipper was a pioneering woman in the field of engineering whose work helped start a whole new field called “fracture mechanics”. It is used today to make sure wings don’t fall off aeroplanes and wheels stay attached to cars – we have a lot to thank her for!
Constance Tipper
Constance Tipper was born in 1894 in Hertfordshire in the UK. She was one of the first women to take a Natural Sciences degree at Cambridge University.
She started working as a metallurgist (a scientist who studies metals) in the Engineering Department at the University. There were not many female metallurgists then, in fact she was the only female full member of the department. Her work would go on to solve a major problem facing ships during World War II in the 1940s.
The Liberty Ships were built to carry much-needed supplies from the USA to people in the UK and Russia. However, the 5, 000 ships had a major problem. The hulls (bottom) of the ships were made of huge sheets of steel welded together and they were fracturing, causing some of the ships to break in two.
Many thought that the freezing seas in the North Atlantic ocean were causing the welding to break apart. However, Constance worked out that in cold conditions the type of steel the ships were made out of became brittle rather than malleable (able to bend). This was causing the steel to crack. Thanks to her discovery, the ship builders were able to make changes to the ships allowing them to continue their important work throughout the war.
Constance continued her work for many years, acting as a ship building consultant into her seventies. She died in 1995 at the age of 101.
Did you know?
Constance wanted to know how the arrangement of atoms in metal affected its strength. To find the answer she used the second scanning electron microscope ever built to examine metals.
She also developed the Tipper Test which is still used today to determine how brittle samples of steel are.
Your students can carry out their own metal experiment by following the instructions on DO try this at home: cereal experiment