Alice Perry

Alice Jacqueline Perry (24 October 1885 – 21 April 1969) was one of the first women in Europe to graduate with a degree in engineering.

Early life and education Born in Wellpark, Galway in 1885, Alice was one of five daughters and a son of Martha Park and James Perry. Her father was the county surveyor in Galway West and co-founded the Galway Electric Light Company. Her uncle, John Perry, was a Fellow of the Royal Society and invented the navigational gyroscope. Alice was one of the first women in Europe to graduate with a degree in engineering - following Rita de Morais Sarmento (Civil Engineering and Public Works from the Academia Politécnica de Oporto (the Polytechnic Academy in Porto) in 1894) and Agnes Klingberg, Betzy Meyer, and Julie Arenholt, who graduated from 1897 to 1901, at the Polyteknisk Læreanstalt, today known as the Danmarks Tekniske Universitet.

The Perry family was academically gifted. Her sister Nettie studied modern languages and went on to become a lecturer in Spanish at London University. Sister Agnes Mary (known as Molly) earned BA (1903) and MA (1905) in mathematics from Queen's College Galway (later UCG then NUIG), taught there in 1903–1904, was a Royal University of Ireland examiner in mathematics in 1906, and later became assistant headmistress at a secondary school in London. She was described as "the most distinguished mathematician of her time in the college". Her sister Martha married the map scholar, Edward William O'Flaherty Lynam, and their son Joss Lynam also became an engineer. All of the Perry sisters were involved in the suffrage campaign in Galway. She met and married John Shaw on 30 September 1916.

On Monday 6 March 2017, NUI Galway held an official ceremony to mark the naming of the Alice Perry Engineering Building.

Publications The children of Nazareth : and other poems (c1930) The morning meal and other poems (1939) Mary in the garden and other poems (1944) One thing I know and other poems (c. 1953) Women of Canaan and other poems (1961)