Cicely Thompson

Cicely Thompson (1919 to 2008) was a British nuclear engineer and a champion of women in engineering. Born Jane Cecily Thompson in Great Ouseburn, England, the daughter of an architect-surveyor, she studied mathematics at Girton College, Cambridge, and then took up practical engineering with the Leicester Electricity Service, working on power station development and design. In 1956 she joined the Associated Electrical Industries John Thompson Group, where she was the only woman on the team designing two nuclear power stations for the Central Electricity Authority, including Hinkley Point B and later Dungeness. She became a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1986 and was awarded an M.B.E. in 1980 for her work in the nuclear industry. She joined the Women's Engineering Society in 1947, served as its president, published a history of the society in 1989 and received its Isabel Hardwich Medal in 1990.