Constance Tipper
Encyclopedia
Constance Fligg Elam Tipper (6 February 1894 – 14 December 1995) was a British
metallurgist
and crystallographer
.
Constance Tipper specialized in the investigation of metal strength and its effect on engineering problems. During the Second World War, she investigated the causes of brittle fracture in Liberty Ships
. These ships were built in the United States between 1941 and 1945, and were the first all-welded pre-fabricated cargo ships.
Tipper established that the fractures were not caused by the welding but were caused by the steel itself. She demonstrated that there is a critical temperature below which the fracture mode in steel changes from ductile to brittle. Because ships in the North Atlantic were subjected to low temperatures, they were susceptible to brittle failure. These fatigue cracks were able to spread across the fused metal of the ship's welded joint plates, instead of stopping at plate edges of a rivetted joint that would have previously been used.
In 1949 Tipper was appointed Reader
and became the only woman to be a full time member of the Faculty of Engineering of Cambridge University.
She was the first person to use a scanning electron microscope
(SEM) to examine metallic fracture faces. She used a scanning electron microscope built by Charles Oatley
and his team, the second SEM ever built.
She retired in 1960 and her 100th birthday in 1994 was celebrated by Newnham College with the planting of the Tipper Tree, a sweet chestnut.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
metallurgist
Metallurgy
Metallurgy is a domain of materials science that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their intermetallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called alloys. It is also the technology of metals: the way in which science is applied to their practical use...
and crystallographer
Crystallography
Crystallography is the experimental science of the arrangement of atoms in solids. The word "crystallography" derives from the Greek words crystallon = cold drop / frozen drop, with its meaning extending to all solids with some degree of transparency, and grapho = write.Before the development of...
.
Constance Tipper specialized in the investigation of metal strength and its effect on engineering problems. During the Second World War, she investigated the causes of brittle fracture in Liberty Ships
Liberty ship
Liberty ships were cargo ships built in the United States during World War II. Though British in conception, they were adapted by the U.S. as they were cheap and quick to build, and came to symbolize U.S. wartime industrial output. Based on vessels ordered by Britain to replace ships torpedoed by...
. These ships were built in the United States between 1941 and 1945, and were the first all-welded pre-fabricated cargo ships.
Tipper established that the fractures were not caused by the welding but were caused by the steel itself. She demonstrated that there is a critical temperature below which the fracture mode in steel changes from ductile to brittle. Because ships in the North Atlantic were subjected to low temperatures, they were susceptible to brittle failure. These fatigue cracks were able to spread across the fused metal of the ship's welded joint plates, instead of stopping at plate edges of a rivetted joint that would have previously been used.
In 1949 Tipper was appointed Reader
Reader (academic rank)
The title of Reader in the United Kingdom and some universities in the Commonwealth nations like Australia and New Zealand denotes an appointment for a senior academic with a distinguished international reputation in research or scholarship...
and became the only woman to be a full time member of the Faculty of Engineering of Cambridge University.
She was the first person to use a scanning electron microscope
Scanning electron microscope
A scanning electron microscope is a type of electron microscope that images a sample by scanning it with a high-energy beam of electrons in a raster scan pattern...
(SEM) to examine metallic fracture faces. She used a scanning electron microscope built by Charles Oatley
Charles Oatley
Sir Charles William Oatley OBE, FRS FREng was Professor of Electrical Engineering, University of Cambridge, 1960–1971, and developer of one of the first commercial scanning electron microscopes....
and his team, the second SEM ever built.
She retired in 1960 and her 100th birthday in 1994 was celebrated by Newnham College with the planting of the Tipper Tree, a sweet chestnut.
Works
- "The Production of Single Crystals of Aluminium and their Tensile Properties" (with H. C. H. Carpenter). Proceedings of the Royal Society of London(1921).
- Deformation of Metal Crystals (1935).
- The Brittle Fracture Story (1962).
External links
- Cambridge Biographical Sketch. Retrieved on May 27, 2007.
- Constance Tipper: A Public Radio Commentary. Retrieved on May 27, 2007.