Residence Wellesley, MA Fields Physics | Name Dorothy Weeks Nationality American | |
Citizenship United States of America Institutions Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyWatertown ArsenalWilson CollegeUS Patent Office Alma mater Wellesley CollegeMassachusetts Institute of TechnologySimmons College Thesis A study of the interference of polarized light by the method of coherency matrices (1930) Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada | ||
Storied Women of MIT: Dorothy Walcott Weeks
Dorothy Walcott Weeks (May 3, 1893 – June 4, 1990) was an American mathematician and physicist. Weeks was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She earned degrees from Wellesley College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Simmons College. Weeks was the first woman to receive a PhD in Mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Life and work
After graduation from Wellesley College in 1916, Weeks went on to work as a teacher and a statistical clerk before becoming the third woman to work as a patent examiner at the US Patent Office in 1917.
In 1924 she obtained a second master's degree, from the Prince School of Business at Simmons College, and became an employment supervisor for Jordan Marsh, the Boston department store. But by 1928, she had returned to academia, teaching physics at Wellesley College while working on her doctorate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1930, Weeks completed a PhD in theoretical physics from the mathematics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her dissertation work was guided by Norbert Wiener. Following completion of graduate studies, Weeks developed and led the physics department at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania from 1930-1956.
Weeks left Wilson on sabbatical from 1943 to 1945, when she worked as a technical aide at the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Later, between 1949–50, Weeks was a Guggenheim fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
From 1956-1964, Weeks was a physicist at the Watertown Arsenal and the technical representative for the Committee on Radioactive Shielding. In 1964, she worked for the NASA supported Solar Satellite Project at the Harvard College Observatory. She would continue to work as at Harvard as a spectroscopist, studying solar satellites at the Harvard College Observatory until she retired in 1976 at the age of eighty-three.