Lillian Moller Gilbreth

Lillian Moller Gilbreth

Biography

Lillian Moller Gilbreth, coined as being a "super women", was a distinguished industrial psychological and mechanical engineer. She is known predominately for her study on scientific management principles. Historically, due to her technical fascination with human behavior in engineering and worker efficiency, she is known as the mother of modern management for pioneering many modern day industrial management techniques.

Born May 24th 1878 in Oakland, California, to parents of German descent, Lillian Moller grew up as a shy girl within a successful Victorian-style family. The oldest of nine children, Lillian was known to be a very introverted child. As a result, she was educated by her parents and tutors at home until the age of 9, where she entered public school. While academically strong, her timid nature made her unpopular among the other students. Despite this, she graduated with high marks in school as the Vice President of the senior class, with distinction in her grades.

Despite her traditionalist father being against higher education for women, Lillian was able to convince him to allow her to study at the University of California in literature and music. While attending college however, she was required to stay home and maintain her family duties. After obtaining her B.A. in literature in 1900 she went on to become the first woman to speak at the University of California commencement .

Wanting to further her education, Lillian planned to study at Columbia University in New York with Brander Matthews, but found he would not allow women to attend his lectures. Fortunately, E.L. Thorndike allowed Lillian into his psychology program at Berkeley. After returning to California due to sickness, then returning back to Berkeley to complete her education, she successfully received her M.A. in literature in 1902.

After completing one year of Ph.D studies, which included a minor in psychology, Lillian took a summer trip to Europe with the chaperone Minnie Bunker. Minnie introduced Lillian to her cousin Frank Gilbreth when the group stopped in Boston en route to Europe. There was instant connection between the two, and they soon married on October 19th, 1904. They eventually went on to have 12 children, a substantial number for the time.

Both were very happy together, and had strong passions relating to their work. Frank, who was a wealthy and prominent owner of a construction company, wanted Lillian to apply her knowledge of psychology to his work. To that end, Lillian changed her major from English to psychology so that after obtaining her Ph.D, she would be able to help her husband in his company. Eventually the couple moved the Rhode Island in 1910, where she obtained her doctorate in 1915. Her dissertation, Psychology of Management was published in 1914 and stressed the psychological aspects of industrial management. Today, as a result of the paper, she is considered a pioneer in what is now known as organizational psychology.

Where Frank was interested in the technical aspect of worker efficiency, Lillian was concerned with the scientific human component of time management. She recognized that workers are motivated by indirect incentives (such as money) and direct incentives, such as job satisfaction. Working with Frank, she created job standardization, incentive wage-plans, and job simplification. She was also the first to study and recognize the effects of fatigue and stress on management.

In addition to making these contributions, Lilian and her husband furthered there research by applying their productivity and efficiency methods to the household. They conducts many experiments, including detailed analyses of motions to help find faster and more efficient ways to wash dishes, brush teeth, and preform other such tasks. As a result of their heavy experimentation in family life, Ernestine Gilbreth Carey and Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr., both daughter and son of the Frank and Lilian, chronologically recorded the events into the well known children's book Cheaper by the Dozen.

However, tragedy soon arose as Frank suffered from a fatal heart attack in the year of 1924. Lillian, left to provide for her family by herself, continued to do so. She went on to become the first female professor in the engineering school at Purdue University, the first woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the second woman to join the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and served as a trainer in management at Bryn Mawr, Rutgers, and Purdue. After her obtaining her position in Purdue University in 1935, she retired in 1948 at the age of seventy.

Even after retirement however, she did not stop her career as a consultant; she continued onward to work with GE and other firms to improve the design of kitchens and household appliances. She also created new techniques to help disabled women accomplish common household tasks. During the great depression, she was consulted by President Hoover to launch the successful "Share the Work" program, assisted as an adviser for the Government in WWII who oversaw the factories producing needed, and invented shelves within refrigerator doors and the foot-pedal garbage can

In 1966, she went on to win the Hoover Medal of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and continued to win twenty honorary degrees. She was also the first female psychologist in the United States to receive a postage stamp in her honor in 1984. Eventually, Lilian went on to pass away on January 2, 1972. Dying at the age of 94, she will be remembered as an iconic figure in American history, one that not only pioneered for industrial psychology and served as an advent inventor, but as a precursor for historically strong female figures to come

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