Name Helen Lewis | ||
Helen Meriwether Lewis Thomas (1905–1997) was the first woman, second American, and third person to earn a Ph.D. degree in the History of Science from Harvard University or Radcliffe College. The first two recipients of this degree at Harvard were Aydin Sayili of Turkey in 1942 and I. Bernard Cohen in 1947.
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Early life and education
Born August 21, 1905 in New York City, Helen Meriwether Lewis Thomas is the daughter of Helen Burdick Lewis and Charles Hengry Lewis Jr. She attended the St. Catherine's School in Westhampton, Richmond, Virginia through 1924 before attending Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At Radcliffe, she studied astronomy and government and graduated cum laude from Radcliffe 1928.
While studying at Radcliffe, she began working part-time at the Harvard Observatory under Dr. Willem Luyten. Luyten's major field of research was devoted to the discovery of white dwarf stars.
Her graduate studies began in 1937 at Harvard University in the department of History of Science. Her dissertation was entitled, The Early History of Variable Star Observing to the 19th Century.
Career
Lewis was employed at Harvard's Radio Research Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Radiation Laboratory during World War II. From 1947 to 1954, she was the senior engineer at the Raytheon Manufacturing Company and later editor and head of the Publications at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Thirty years after entering the Cosmic Contest in 1956, she won a $50,000 prize from Trans World Airlines for being the contestant who was able to make the most accurate prediction of the nature of air travel thirty years into the future. She predicted the range, cruising speed, and passenger capacity of commercial aircraft and predicted that they would be powered by jet engines.
Personal
After graduating from Radcliffe College, she married and then divorced Frederick M. Thomas with whom she had one son, Roger Thomas. She was also the Radcliffe class of 1928 secretary whose duty was to keep records of activities and accomplishments of classmates.
On August 6, 1997, Helen Meriwether Lewis died at the age 91. Her papers, dating from 1890 to 1997, are located in the Radcliffe College Archives in the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.