Dorothy Donaldson Buchanan

Dorothy Donaldson Buchanan, married name Fleming (8 October 1899 in Dumfriesshire – 13 June 1985 in Somerset) was a Scottish civil engineer, and the first female member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, successfully passing the institution's admission examination in 1927.

Early life and education Buchanan was born at Langholm, the youngest of five children of Reverend James Donaldson Buchanan and Marion Vassie. She was educated at Langholm Academy in Langholm, a town where Thomas Telford had worked as a mason before going on to become an eminent civil engineer; this may have been the inspiration for Buchanan to choose to study for a degree in civil engineering from the University of Edinburgh and her time overlapped with the first woman in Scotland to graduate with a degree in engineering, Elizabeth Georgeson. Buchanan was listed on the 1921 census, taken on 19 June, as a part-time engineering student and a visitor at Georgeson's home Upper Sunnyside on Lowther Street in Penrith. She became a member of the Women's Engineering Society during her time at university. Illness (mumps) delayed her completion of her studies, so she graduated in 1923. She arrived at Dorman's London office at the same time that Kathleen M. Butler, the project manager and Confidential Secretary to the Sydney Harbour Bridge Chief Engineer John Bradfield arrived with three engineers to set up the offices for the Australian arm of the operation.

She later worked on overseas bridges (Dessouk and Khartoum). In Northern Ireland, her training supervision was undertaken by Sir Ernest Moir, a director of S. Pearson and Son (and husband of Margaret, Lady Moir, co-founder of the Women's Engineering Society). Buchanan is reputed to have avoided having to have a chaperone by simply and repeatedly departing for work before the chaperone arrived. she recounted being surprised to find another woman in the waiting room, because she was aware that she would be the first female engineer to be recognised by the ICE if she were to be successful in the interview. The other woman in the waiting room transpired to be a chaperone brought in for the sake of decency. She was granted membership of the ICE in December 1927, as the only female amongst 9,979 men in the Institution. She later remarked, ‘I felt that I represented all the women in the world. It was my hope that I would be followed by many others’ (New Civil Engineer, 6 July 1978, 15–16).

Later life

Upon marriage in 1930 to William H. Dalrymple Fleming, an electrical engineer, she retired from engineering. In February 2019, to celebrate their first female member of the institution, the ICE named a room after her, at their headquarters (in the same building where she had not been allowed to be interviewed without the presence of a chaperone).