Patricia Brown

Patricia L. Brown (born October 1, 1928) was the first female chemical engineer to graduate from Southwestern Louisiana Institute. She was one out of a total of two female chemical engineers at Stepan Company in 1993.

Education Patricia Brown graduated from Southwestern Louisiana Institute as the first female chemical engineer in 1947. Then she earned her master's degree in chemistry from the University of Texas in 1949.

She was a key Member in helping keep SWE afloat in the late 1950s, when money was scarce and membership was low.

While Brown was president of SWE, she worked with Lillian Moller Gilbreth to help advance SWE's goals to encourage women engineers to succeed. As president, because of a minor miscommunication, Brown presented an honorary award to Marlene Schmidt, a German engineer who was also Miss Universe at the time. She attempted to persuade Grace Hopper to help SWE's cause as well, but Hopper did not believe in a separate society for women.