M. Elsa Gardner

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M. Elsa Gardner (1894–1963) was an American aeronautical engineer and a pioneer for women in engineering. Born Maude Elsa Gardner in Brooklyn, New York, she faced an illness in childhood that left her with a limp, but she pursued education and a career in engineering.

Gardner attended St. Lawrence University, studying mechanical engineering and mathematics, along with languages. After graduating in 1916, she worked as a statistician until World War I, when she joined the British Ministry of Munitions of War in New York City as a gauge examiner and then worked for Bliss Company Torpedo Works for the U.S. Navy. There she helped improve the standards of torpedo gauges and set up a testing range at Sag Harbor. She decided to deepen her engineering career and studied at New York University and Pratt Institute, working by day and studying by night because her father believed that more education would not pay off.

She won a scholarship to the aeronautical engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). To fund her studies, she wrote and edited Aero Digest magazine. She was a contemporary of Elsie MacGill and faced gender barriers at MIT, but she persisted and made her way into the field. After the war, during the Great Depression, Gardner worked for Wright Aeronautical in Paterson, New Jersey, and also served as a bibliographer, statistician, and project examiner. She did editorial work for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and created a card index system to organize aeronautical, mechanical, and automotive references. She also produced the Technical Data Digest, a twice‑monthly publication of hundreds of abstracts from multiple countries, based in Dayton, Ohio. Her work helped keep both military and civilian aviation up to date.

During World War II and beyond, Gardner continued her career as an aeronautical engineer for the U.S. Navy. From 1941 to 1960 she worked in the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics and later in the Bureau of Naval Weapons Technical Library, retiring in 1962.

Gardner broke several barriers for women in engineering. She was the first woman invited to join both the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences (IAS) and its successor, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In 1936 she became the first woman member of the Engineers Club of Dayton. She also joined the British Women’s Engineering Society in 1929 and served on its council as the American representative, maintaining cross‑Atlantic correspondence until the Second World War. Her public speech about women engineers was published and shared by several organizations.

She lived for many years in Washington, D.C., and was a member of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. Gardner was diagnosed with cancer in 1962 and died in Washington on February 8, 1963. Her pioneering work and leadership helped pave the way for future generations of women in engineering.