Irene C. Peden, Ph.D., F.SWE
1925–2025
Electrical engineer, victor over repeated discrimination, groundbreaking investigator in Antarctica
Irene C. Peden, Ph.D., a Fellow of the Society of Women Engineers who fought sexism at every turn and achieved many firsts as a woman electrical engineer, died August 22, 2025, just shy of her 100th birthday.
Born in Topeka, Kansas, to a country schoolteacher and a businessman, Dr. Peden developed a fondness for science early. Discouraged from taking physics classes in high school by teachers who claimed the subject would be too difficult, she studied chemistry instead. However, she returned to physics when she entered Kansas City Junior College (now Kansas City Kansas Community College).
In 1944, she transferred to the University of Colorado and earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. There, she was one of a dozen women in her classes, an unusually high number due to the absence of many men who were involved in World War II. She earned subsequent degrees in electrical engineering at Stanford, including a master’s in 1958 and a doctorate in 1962.
She joined a campus group for women engineers while at the University of Colorado. She also became a student member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, a predecessor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and developed a particular interest in learning about transmission lines.
After graduating in 1947, she married and moved with her husband to Delaware, where she sought a job as an electrical engineer, only to find most doors were closed to women. Eventually, a power utility hired her to calculate the impact of local service interruptions on the network, but she grew “bored,” she told interviewer Lauren Kata in an oral history for the Society of Women Engineers.
In the early 1950s, she and her husband moved to California so he could attend Stanford University, and Dr. Peden again found companies unwilling to hire women engineers. So, she secured a job in the antennas lab at the Stanford Research Institute, performing precise hand measurements. Outgrowing that position, she decided to pursue a master’s degree at Stanford.
Working and attending classes part time, she completed her degree in six years. “By the time I finished, I didn’t want to quit [learning],” she told Kata. “There were more things I wanted to know.” She then became a research assistant and full-time graduate student in Stanford’s microwave lab, earning the first doctoral degree in engineering Stanford ever awarded to a woman.
Divorced and seeking jobs in teaching, Dr. Peden again faced discrimination. In 1962, the dean of the University of Washington reluctantly interviewed her and asked many questions “they’re not allowed to ask anymore,” she said. She was hired as an assistant professor — the first woman to be hired as a faculty member in UW’s engineering department — and achieved tenure in four years. By this time, she had met and married Leo Peden, a Seattle lawyer. She joined SWE as a senior member in 1964.
At UW, she encountered two researchers who had a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to conduct polar studies at the intersection of geophysics and electrical engineering in Antarctica. She expressed an interest in joining them. “They had designed a 21-mile dipole antenna to be stretched out on the ice to send very low-frequency signals up to the ionosphere to be bounced back,” she explained. She saw some holes in their theories that her research could fill, so she and a graduate student built a model to test as part of the NSF project. Other students added their experiments under her guidance, and Dr. Peden became a co-principal investigator on the project.
The researchers were required to travel to Antarctica to test their theories, but she again encountered obstacles. The U.S. Navy, which provided the transportation for the researchers, “didn’t want to take me,” she said. They first requested that her study be peer-reviewed, although this was not required of her male counterparts. They then objected that there would be no bathrooms for women and said if she became injured or sick, no male doctor would be allowed to treat her without another woman present. She found another woman researcher who was interested and willing to go, and they brought their own version of a porta-potty. Finally, when she was ready to board the plane to Antarctica, her equipment was taken from her to be placed in a cargo hold. By the time she arrived at Byrd Station in Antarctica, the equipment had been reported lost.
Knowing that if she failed, it might be decades before another woman was allowed on such a trip, she connected with a graduate student at the station who had buried equipment in the snow for safekeeping during a previous visit. He dug up the equipment and helped her modify it for her use, which took up roughly half the time she had been allotted for her experiments. She persisted and successfully conducted her research in half the time anticipated. The Peden Cliffs in Antarctica were later named in her honor.
Dr. Peden went on to serve as associate dean of the UW College of Engineering and associate chair of the electrical engineering department. She received the SWE Achievement Award in 1973 and became a SWE Fellow in 1991 in recognition of her support for women students. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1993.
She continued her membership with IEEE throughout her academic and professional years and became a fellow of the organization, from which she received many awards, including the Haraden Pratt Award and the Centennial Medal, among others.
Dr. Peden served as a board member and chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Engineering Accreditation Commission. In the 1990s, she served two years as director of the division of electrical and communications systems at the NSF, which named her its 1993 Engineer of the Year. She was inducted into the Engineering Educators Hall of Fame in 1993 by the American Society for Engineering Education.
In 1994, she retired as emerita professor at UW. The university established the Professor Irene C. Peden Electrical Engineering Fellowship in her name in 2015. She received the university’s Diamond Award in 2018, which honors outstanding alumni who have made significant contributions to the field of engineering.
She is survived by her sister Cynthia Galyardt of Olathe, Kansas, stepdaughters Jennifer and Jefri, two grandsons, three nephews, and three nieces.
Sources
SWE documents and oral history, University of Washington data, and the Seattle Times.
