Elizabeth "Betty" Audrey Killick was a British naval electronics engineer who worked on radar and weapons systems for the Ministry of Defence.
17 Facts About Elizabeth Killick
1.
2.
Killick was born in Brixton Hill, London, to George Killick and Winifred Baines.
3.
Elizabeth Killick's father was a chartered accountant who was appointed to the Order of the British Empire in 1954 for service to the Cotton Board.
4.
Elizabeth Killick's maternal grandfather was a political agent, and her mother's brothers worked for the London Stock Exchange.
5.
Elizabeth Killick moved with her family to Cheshire during World War II to avoid the Blitz.
6.
Elizabeth Killick joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in about 1942 and worked as a radar mechanic.
7.
When she was demobilized in 1947, Elizabeth Killick was briefly at the Royal Air Force Institute of Aviation Medicine as a laboratory assistant, before going to the University of St Andrews where she earned a degree in natural philosophy in 1951 and was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1998.
8.
In 1951 Elizabeth Killick joined the Admiralty Signals and Radar Establishment, near Portsmouth, working in a group which later became the Antenna Division, and was noted there for her work on innovative defence radar and sonar systems.
9.
Elizabeth Killick's work was of course highly secret but in 1967 she made one of only a few public presentations of her work, a paper on Radar Techniques at a meeting of the Portsmouth and District Physical Society on 8 March 1967.
10.
Elizabeth Killick joined the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment in 1969, in which year she was allowed to present some more of her work, on microwave antenna arrays, at the 1st European Microwave Conference.
11.
Elizabeth Killick concentrated on defence and radar systems before moving to torpedoes development.
12.
Elizabeth Killick did not like being considered a "woman engineer"; and would not permit the Women's Engineering Society to interview her.
13.
In 1980, Elizabeth Killick was elected Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and was the first woman to be elected to the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1982, by which time she had, according to her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "attained a level of seniority which was unparalleled among women in engineering at the time".
14.
Elizabeth Killick served as a board member for the Marine Technology Directorate, where she coordinated projects between the government, academia and industry.
15.
Elizabeth Killick did not get on well with Arnold Weinstock and left the organisation.
16.
Elizabeth Killick was described as "a brilliant, if somewhat volatile, engineer who was both terrifying and inspiring to her colleagues" but who was at the same time "a formidable authority" with a strong sense of humour.
17.
Elizabeth Killick died at Stoughton of a heart attack on 7 July 2019.