Name Marion Hart | Role Writer | |
Died 1990, Berkeley, California, United States Books How to Navigate Today, Who Called that Lady a Skipper?: The Strange Voyage of a Woman Navigator Education Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology | ||
Marion Rice Hart (1891, London – July 2, 1990, Berkeley, Calif) was an American sportswoman and writer.
Hart was the fourth of six children of Isaac Rice, a businessman who founded the Electric Boat Company (producer of submarines for the US Navy and others). Her older sister Dorothy Rice Peirce Sims (1889–1960) also became famous as an aviator and sportswoman. Their mother Julia B. Rice founded the Society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noises in New York City.
According to the cultural historian Hillel Schwartz, as paraphrased by a New Yorker journalist:
"In 1903, Isaac Rice and his wife and intellectual partner, Julia Barnett Rice—both accomplished musicians—sought to escape noisy Broadway. They built a four-story mansion on the tree-lined drive, then a place replete with coaches and foreign servants, and largely free from cars. Julia had a medical degree; Isaac, a venture capitalist, invested in things like air compressors, submarines, and the “pickled energy” that powered electric vehicles."Julia Rice's campaign resulted in a federal law "quieting the whistles of ships in federal waters".
Hart was the first woman to graduate in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a masters in geology from Columbia University.
As an aviator, Hart made seven solo flights across the Atlantic Ocean and was awarded the 1975 Harmon Trophy.
According to a 1960 obituary of Dorothy Rice Sims, Hart had "achieved note during the [1930s] by sailing across 30,000 miles of ocean in an 80-foot ketch". Dorothy was survived by Marion and three others of their siblings.