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LILLIAN MOLLER GILBRETH
1878-1972
B Y J A M E S N
. LANDIS
N 1966, well into her eighty-ninth year, Dr. Lillian Moller Gil-
breth became the first woman to be elected to the National
Academy of Engineering for her the last, except for the Hoover
Medal that same year, of a series of "first woman evers," which
began in 1900 when she became the first woman ever to be a
University of California commencement speaker. Number One on
the membership roster of the Society of Women Engineers, she
urged women to enter the engineering profession decades before
engineering schools were working with any vigor toward this end.
She was a strong advocate of removal of age barriers in the hiring
of workers and considered compulsory retirement to be based
upon an outgrown psychology that fails to put the health and
happiness of workers above the adjustable mechanics of the system
within which human beings work.
She was honored as few women have been, and through it all she
retained an innate simplicity that is a distinguishing characteristic
of a truly great human being. Asked late in life what in her career
she considered her most important achievement, she replied with-
out hesitation, "My work for the handicapped—that is the one that
has done the most good."
Dr. Gilbreth's achievements are even more remarkable in the
light of her sheltered youth. Born in Oakland, California, on May
24, 1878, she was the oldest of six sisters and three brothers in the
home of affluent parents where children arrived with proverbial
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silver spoons in their mouths. Children were taught the old-
fashioned virtues in the Moller home, including obedience to
parents, responsibilities for younger children, and that boys were
not supposed to do girls' work and vice versa. Education was
respected, but college was not for young women except those who
would have to earn a living. It was taken for granted that no
daughter would ever have to earn a living though no lady, of
course, should ever be idle. However, Lillian keenly desired a
college education. She was graduated from the University of
California with a Bachelor of Literature degree and Phi Beta
Kappa in 1900 and stayed on for two more years for her Master of
Literature degree.
In 1904 she married a self:made construction engineer, Frank
Bunker Gilbreth, the pioneer of motion study, with no idea that not
only was she to become a leader in the engineering world, but was
also to become mother of six sons and six daughters. One daughter
died of diphtheria in 1912.
It was her specific talent for psychology that would enable her to
contribute early in the field into which cooperation in her hus-
band's work plunged her. Both Gilbreths recognized need for
greater use of psychology in some of the work engineers per-
formed. Her thesis on "The Psychology of Management" was
submitted to her alma mater, but she was told that a Doctor of
Philosophy degree could not be awarded without a year spent in
residence as a doctoral candidate. This was impossible for a mother
busily engaged raising a family at the same time. Through Frank s
1 ~ 1 . 1 '
help, ner thesis was published in installments between 1912 and
1913 in the magazine of the Society of industrial Engineers and as
a book soon thereafter, by Sturgis and Walton. Mr. Walton ruled
there could be no word about the {act it was written by a woman
and it was published under the name of L. M. Gilbreth.
Frank Gilbreth next set out to help her get a doctoral degree. A
contract awarded to Frank to install scientific management at a
plant near Brown University brought them in contact with Dr.
Faunce, President of Brown University, who was personally in-
terested in psychology and its application to management. At
Brown University in 1915, Lillian became a Ph.D. Although Frank,
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then enroute from Germany, was not there to see his wife receive
this honor, the children were; and a few days later another daugh-
ter was born.
Interest in the psychology that underlies all industrial human
relationships, plus interest in the motions involved in industrial
practices, made work for the handicapped a natural outlet for the
talents of both Gilbreths. Industrial accidents had long been inflict-
ing physical disabilities on many human beings, but World War I
increased the number and urgency of these problems. Thousands
of service men in Europe and America were soon facing handicaps
for the remainder of their lives with, in many cases, psychological
blocks accompanying their physical disabilities. The Gilbreths faced
the challenge of amputees and others. Often, with the help of
motion studies, they were able to show how work formerly thought
possible only for two-legged or two-handed men could be done by
one-legged men, or by skilled one-handed men.
Dr. Gilbreth's first step alone toward the place she would win for
herself in international management circles was taken five days
after her husband's death, in 1924, when she sailed, as they had
planned to sail together, for Prague, for history's First Interna-
tional Management Congress, which they had helped organize.
Here she read the jointly prepared paper he was to have read,
presided over the session where he was to have presided, and was
made a member of the Masaryk Academy. Then she returned
home to face the facts of life the first of which was a home in
which eleven children were growing up and would need forty-four
years of college education and heavy financial necessities for a long
time. She wrote down as the first item in her plan for the future,
"Provide a home, a living, and love for the family," followed by,
"Teach Frank's work," and a third item about finding and pushing
projects that would affect the health and efficiency of human
beings in industry.
Anyone who knew the Lillian Gilbreth of her later years knows
how successful she was in fulfilling those three promises she made
herself in 1924. Her first sixteen-week study course was under way
the following January in the motion-study laboratory Frank and
she had established in their Montclair home. During the next six
91
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years, it was followed by six other such courses in which representa-
tives from Belgium, England, and Germany were trained in the
laboratory side by side with representatives from American com-
panies. By the time the seventh course was under way, she had
been called upon as a consultant often enough to know that some
American businessmen, at least, were ready and willing to use a
woman's professional competence in management problems. She
had been assured that the psychology she brought into the solution
of management problems was resulting in changed attitudes,
among both employees and employers, and had made her work
profitable financially to business and industry. With motion-study
laboratories now established at several colleges, she felt free to
discontinue the courses in the home laboratory and devote more of
her time to consultant work.
In 1935 she was appointed on a part-time schedule as Prolessor
of Management at Purdue University, continuing there until 1948.
She was able to become more selective in the jobs she accepted,
preferring those in which psychological understanding was an asset
and those in which upper management echelons were interested in
achieving technical efficiencies without loss of the dignity, health,
or happiness of workers. The interest in helping the disabled
achieve satisfying work and the human dignity of supporting
themselves would stay with Lillian Gilbreth as long as she lived. She
helped enable industry to use the skills of highly gifted workers
who, without the application of motion study and psychology to
their problems, might have become a drain upon the nation's
resources instead of being the national asset they actually became
through utilization of their valuable resources. Moreover, indi-
vidual homes as well as industries reaped happy results from her
work when she found ways, which spread over America and
Europe, to improve efficiency in the kitchens of both the able-
bodied and the physically handicapped in wheelchairs.
The combining of psychological understanding and efficiency
improvement was the specific realm to which Lillian Gilbreth
brought superb qualifications. She became known and respected in
domestic and international engineering and humanitarian
groups as well, probably, as any of her peers of either sex.
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Between 1929 and 1966 she made literally hundreds of addresses,
at their invitations, to technical organizations, civic groups, service
clubs, hospital and rehabilitation teams, and universities, in the
United States and abroad: Australia, Canada, England, Germany,
Holland, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines,
South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey. To many
of them she had become an American symbol of the art of human
relationships. A woman of high gifts and remarkably without
antagonisms, she was a bearer of international good will in scores of
industrial centers.
Beginning in 1930 with Herbert Hoover's Emergency Commit-
tee for Employment, followed by later services on Hoover's Or-
ganization for Unemployment Relief, she served five Presidents on
committees dealing with civil defense, war production, and re-
habilitation of the physically handicapped. Over a decade of service
was rendered to the Girl Scouts in national positions and service to
numerous other humanitarian organizations. She authored or
coauthored ten books. Several books and numerous articles were
written about her. She received twenty-three doctorates, more than
a dozen honorary memberships in professional societies, and some
of the most distinguished medals and awards given by the en-
gineering profession. Among the latter are the first (1931) award
of the Gilbreth Medal created by the Society of Industrial En-
gineers, the Gantt Medal (with Frank B. Gilbreth, posthumously),
the Wallace Clark Award, and the Washington Award of the
Western Society of Engineers. In 1949 she received the Gold Medal
of the National Institute for Social Sciences "for distinguished
service to humanity" and, in 1961 (again with her husband post-
humously), the Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Industrial Engineers
Award of the American Institute of Industrial Engineers. This
softspoken woman became accepted as American's First Lady of
Engineering.
In 1966, soon after becoming a Member of the National
Academy of Engineering, the Hoover Medal was bestowed on her
by a Board of Award consisting of representatives of the American
Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Mining and
Metallurgical Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical En-
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gineers, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
The citation accompanying the Hoover Medal constitutes a fine
encapsulation of this notable lady's work and position in engineer-
ing:
Renowned engineer, internationally respected for contributions to motion
study and to recognition of the principle that management engineering
and human relations are intertwined; courageous wile and mother; out-
standing teacher, author, lecturer and member of professional committees
under Herbert Hoover and tour successors. Additionally, her unselfish
application of energy and creative ellorts in modifying industrial and
home environments for the handicapped has resulted in lull employment
of their capabilities and elevation of their sell:esteem.
Lillian Gilbreth's life, as lived joyously, fully, and generously, was
one of activity for good. She died on January 2, 1972; until the day
of her retirement, past ninety, in December 1968, she remained a
doer and a worker wishing always to find the best way and to
share her best.
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