Cicely Thompson

Cicely Thompson M.B.E. (9 June 1919 – 3 February 2008) was a nuclear engineer.

Early life She was born Jane Cecily Thompson on 9 June 1919 in Great Ouseburn, England, to James Osbert Thompson and Jane Harrision Highmoor. Her father was an architect-surveyor. She took up practical engineering when she joined the Leicester Electricity Service, beginning a career in power station development and design.

Career

In 1956, Thompson joined the Associated Electrical Industries John Thompson Group (AEIJTG) and was the only woman on the team designing two nuclear power stations for the Central Electricity Authority, including Hinckley Point B and later the Dungeness power station. Thompson was unable to fulfill the two full years in post due to working in Italy, and was replaced by Dorothy Cridland, but resumed the Presidency in 1965. and attended the second ICWES conference in Cambridge in 1967, where amongst other things, she was taught how to wear a sari by Indian engineer K. K. Khubchandani alongside fellow WES members and engineers Rose Winslade, Hettie Bussell, and US delegates Louise Davies and Betty Lou Bailey.

In 1989 she published a history of the Women's Engineering Society and in 1990 was awarded the Isabel Hardwich Medal.

She was also elected a member of the American Society of Women Engineers.

Cicely Thompson died on 3 February 2008, and left a legacy to WES.