Ruth Kern #25

Ruth E. Kern, SWE Founding Member and Charter Member of the Philadelphia Section, was one of the “graduate” engineers who joined with the women engineering students to develop the SWE organization begun by students at the Drexel Institute of Technology, now Drexel University, in the mid 1940s. She was an active member and held multiple officer positions throughout the 1950s – two years as Recording Secretary, two years as Treasurer, one term as Corresponding Secretary, and one term as Statistics Chair.

Ruth graduated from Swarthmore College 1928 with a B.A. with Honors in mathematics. She then continued at the school to receive a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1932. She joined the General Electric Company in May 1934 and worked in Schenectady, NY at the Research Laboratory until 1941 when she transferred to the Switchgear Department in Philadelphia and met Doris McNulty. She retired from in January 1972 after 37 years with the company. While she was an Air Circuit Breaker Section Engineer at Switchgear, she received a patent for an “improved, interchangeable, inverse time-delay-tripping unit for the thermal air circuit breakers.”

Ruth was also a Sigma Xi Associate and Member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. Sometime after retiring she moved to California and was a member of the SWE-Santa Clara Valley Section in 1987. She is now deceased.

Sources:
SWE Archives - Membership Application
Philadelphia Section Newsletter - NONAME – YET! and THE OUTLOOK
“Bios of Swarthmore Women Engineers,” Kasia Doziol-Dube, http://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~WS30/kasia/index.htm
Personal memories – Doris McNulty

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