Julia Weertman

Julia Randall Weertman (February 10, 1926 – July 31, 2018) was an American materials scientist who taught at Northwestern University as the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.

She was the first female student of the College of Science and Engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, where she earned her baccalaureate and graduate degrees.[1] Weertman met her husband Johannes at Carnegie, and both later joined the Northwestern University faculty.[2] In 1986, Julia Weertman was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.[3] She became the first woman in the United States to lead a materials science department when she was appointed chair of Northwestern's Department of Materials Science and Engineering the next year.[1] Weertman was granted membership into the National Academy of Engineering in 1988, "for exceptional research on failure mechanisms in high-temperature alloys."[4] She was also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[1]

Weertman died, aged 92, on July 31, 2018.[1]