New for December 2024. We are pleased to sponsor a monetary award at the ARMMS conference in UK, for the best female presenter. The award is named in honor of Katharine Franck Huettner.
The KFH award will be made twice a year at the April and November conferences, and the very first award went to... drum roll...
- November 2024: Fatemeh Hoveizavi, who works for EDRMedeso, for her talk on "From Automation to AI: Optimising Phased Array Antenna Design with PYAEDT and HFSS" Brava!
We will keep adding names to this page as awards are made. The next conference is 28 to 29 April 2025, at Double Tree by Hilton Oxford Belfry, Nr Thame.
On this page we will provide a little background on the namesake for this award.
Early life
Ms. Franck was born in Beijing China in 1923, while her father was authoring a travel book. Her childhood nickname "Hsiao Mei-Mei" (little sister) stuck with her for life, answering to Hsiao to all her parents, brothers and sister, cousins, etc. During elementary school she lived in France long enough so that she became proficient in the French language for life. She attended Westover School in Middlebury Connecticut. Westover was founded in 1909 and remains to this day an all-women's (and pricy) grade 9 to 12 school.
College years
Ms. Franck earned her Bachelor of Science in Physics at Bryn Mawr, an all-women's college in PA. She lived in the "French house" (Wyndham Hall) where the use of English in conversations was highly discouraged. After receiving her BS in 1944, she moved on to MIT, and earned her MS in Physics (1948) there. Her goal of earning a PhD was not in the cards, as according to family legend, an MIT professor tweaked his grading system to put her just below the curve, and her father decided that was enough of this investment.
MIT was a hotbed of research during WWII, especially at the "Rad Lab", organized by Vannevar Bush. But the college wasn't exactly all ponies and rainbows. Learn more about MIT's history of misogyny, here.
Research during WWII
Taking time out from her studies, Ms. Franck joined the team at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in developing the VT proximity fuze. That research product altered the course of the war for sure, as chronicled on HistoryNet. Here is a brief "Microwaves101" description of that effort, and photos of an actual fuze that was autographed by the staff.
Engineer
Ms. Franck took a job at Airborne Instruments Laboratories in Mineola (Long Island) New York, one of two women in a staff of 150. Long Island has a storied history of technology developments, starting with Marconi picking it for the site of the United States first radio station in 1902. The New York Daily News profiled them in an article on October 3, 1949. Here is an excerpt from that article. Note the extensive use of engineering terminology from that era, such as blue-eyed, pretty, gal, skirt, sweater, tall, slim, vivacious, athletic, "biggest assets"...
2 Girls Skilled in Engineering Disagree It’s a Job for Women
Blue-eyed Katharine Franck, a graduate engineer but looking like a pretty college gal in her checked skirt and white sweater, considers engineering a fine field for women. And if she had to choose a career again, it would be, she vows, the same – engineering.
Marie Jameson, tall, slim and vivacious, does not agree completely with her co-worker. She thinks there are still disadvantages for a woman engineer. And if she had to choose a career again, it might be engineering – then again, maybe not.
“It would all depend,” says Miss Jameson, who holds a BA degree in math from Wellesley College. “The war threw me into engineering. Girls were going into it and I was offered a job in engineering.”
Work in Mineola Laboratory
Putting aside any ifs or buts, both today are handling jobs as skilled engineers, doing unusual work for women, in the Airborne Instruments Laboratory, Mineola, Nassau, which is devoted chiefly to engineering of electronic system and devices.
Intricate Circuit Tests
Miss Jameson, doing chiefly antennae work, frequently has to make 75-100 foot climbs, weather regardless, in summer sun or winter cold. Athletic, she takes these in her stride.
Miss Franck, taking time out from her present problem of making intricate circuiting performance tests, finds patience one of her biggest assets. "My main·problem now is keeping all the different gadgets—each one feeds into the next one—running at the same time,” she explained.
Both girls will take part in the industrial exposition to be held tomorrow to Wednesday at Roosevelt Field in connection with the Nassau County Golden Jubilee celebration.
The exposition, at which the Airborne Instruments Laboratory will have an exhibit depicting a phase of the Berlin air lift operation, will be put on by the Long Island Association in cooperation with the county, the New York State Department of Commerce and other groups. Key industries in the county will have exhibits.
Here is a photo of "Katharine Franck, gal engineer" from the article, and here is a scan of the article itself.
Later life
It did not take long for Ms. Franck to gain the attention of an engineer with the last name Huettner, and they married in 1950. Before the decade was over they had five children, and she put up with her husband building his own house on weekends in New Jersey. She left her job for two reasons, first and foremost to become a full-time mother. Secondly, it became apparent to management at Airborne Instruments that a specific engineering couple at the company were pulling down more wages than the president of the company, and they could not have that! Imagine how far we've come, now that CEOs earn an average of 290X the pay of the average worker.
By the 1970s Ms. Huettner decided to go back to work, primarily to help out with the college bills of her family (four bachelor's degrees, three master's degrees and one woman-owned PhD and not a single student loan.) After being out of the engineering workforce she went in a different direction, and earned enough college credits at night school to become the head librarian of the local high school.
She died in 2016 at 83 years old. She never owned a car that didn't have a stick-shift transmission.