Constance Tipper investigated brittle fracture and the ductile-brittle transition of metals used in the construction of warships, and was the first female full-time faculty member at Cambridge University Department of Engineering.
14 Facts About Constance Tipper
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Constance Tipper was educated at Saint Felix School, Southwold before studying engineering at Newnham College, Cambridge.
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Constance Tipper achieved a third class in Part I of the Natural Science Tripos.
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Constance Tipper wrote of the congress and her impressions of her two months travelling in Canada and America for The Woman Engineer journal, published by the British Women's Engineering Society, of which she was a member.
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Constance Tipper was appointed as a lecturer in the department of engineering from 1939, as one of the first women lecturers in the university at a time when many male lecturers went off to wartime work.
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In 1949 Constance Tipper was appointed as a reader at Cambridge University, becoming the only full-time woman member of the faculty of engineering.
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Constance Tipper remained at Cambridge until her retirement in 1960.
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Constance Tipper specialised in the investigation of metal strength and its effect on engineering problems.
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Taylor on distortion of aluminium crystals under tension received the 1923 Royal Society Bakerian Medal, although Constance Tipper was prevented from attending the celebratory dinner due to being a woman.
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Constance Tipper established that the fractures were not caused by welding, but were due to the properties of the steel itself.
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Constance Tipper demonstrated that there is a critical temperature below which the fracture mode in steel changes from ductile to brittle.
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Constance Tipper developed what is known as the "Tipper Test" to help ensure that the metal used in ship construction was sufficiently sound.
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Constance Tipper was the first person to use a scanning electron microscope to examine metallic fracture faces.
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Constance Tipper used a scanning electron microscope built by Charles Oatley and his team, the second SEM ever built.