Yvonne Brill

Yvonne Madelaine Brill was a Canadian-American aerospace engineer, born in 1924 and died in 2013, who spent most of her career at RCA Astro Electronics working on rocket and satellite propulsion, including NASA's TIROS weather satellite program and the Mars Observer mission. She invented the electrothermal hydrazine thruster, a fuel-efficient rocket thruster that keeps satellites correctly positioned in orbit, improving satellite propellant efficiency by about thirty percent and allowing spacecraft to carry more equipment or operate longer; the design became an industry standard adopted by major aerospace manufacturers. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1987, inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2010, and received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation the same year.