Yvonne Brill Rocketry Pioneer and ASME Honoree Dies

Yvonne Brill Rocketry Pioneer and ASME Honoree Dies Yvonne Brill Rocketry Pioneer and ASME Honoree Dies Yvonne Brill, Rocketry Pioneer and ASME Honoree, DiesPresident Barack Obama (right) presented Yvonne Brill with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2011.Yvonne C. Brill, a world-renowned rocket scientist who invented a more efficient thruster to keep satellites in orbit, died in Princeton, N.J., from complications due to breast cancer on March 27. She welches 88 years old. Brill contributed to the propulsion systems of NASA spacecraft ranging from the first weatherbei satellite for the Television Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS) program to the Mars Observer, and was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2011 by President Barack Obama. ASME paid tribute to Brills storied career later that year with the Societys inaugural Kate Gleason Award, which honors achievements by female engineering professionals. After earning a bachelors degree in mat hematics from the University of Manitoba in 1945, Brill joined Douglas Aircraft in California, where she embarked on her career in rocket science. She is believed to have been the only woman in the United States working as a rocket scientist at the time. Brill specialized in rocket propulsion, and took graduate classes in the evening at University of Southern California. She received a masters degree in chemistry from USC in 1951.After taking time off to raise three children in the 1950s, Brill was hired by RCA Astro Electronics in Princeton, N.J., where patented the hydrazine resistojet, also known as the electrothermal hydrazine thruster (EHT). The system, now an industry standard, allowed engineers to more efficiently alter the position of satellites in a geosynchronous orbit around Earth. Yvonne BrillShe left RCA to serve as director of the space shuttle solid rocket motor program at NASA headquarters from 1981-1983, then returned to RCA for three years before accepting the p osition of space segment engineer with the International Maritime Satellite Organization (INMARSAT) in London from 1986. After retiring from INMARSAT in 1991, she served as a consultant and a member of many U.S. National Research Council committees providing science and technology policy advice to government agencies. A year after her 2010 induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for her invention of the EHT system, Brill was presented the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Obama. The award, established in in 1980 and administered for the White House by the U.S. Department of Commerces Patent and Trademark Office, recognizes those who have made lasting contributions to Americas competitiveness and quality of life and helped strengthen the Nations technological workforce. In November 2011, Brill was the first recipient of ASMEs Kate Gleason Award. The award honors the legacy of Kate Gleason, the first woman to become a full member of ASME, and recogniz es a female engineer who is a highly successful entrepreneur in a field of engineering or who has had a lifetime of achievement in the engineering profession. Im excited to receive this inaugural award, Brill said after learning she had won the award. Kate Gleason was truly a pioneer. She just went about and did what she had to do. Ive always felt that way too. I think I have her spirit.Brill was the recipient of numerous honors during her 65-year career. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1987 and was the second woman in history to be named an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in 2008. She had been an AIAA Fellow since 1986. She was very active in the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), was elected as an SWE Fellow in 1985, and received the organizations Resnik Challenger Medal in 1993. She also received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Resnik Award in 2002.Please visit this page to watc h a video profile of Brill and her distinguished career.