Physicists Willie Hobbs Moore was born on May 24th 1934 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. In 1952, her family relocated to Ann Arbor, Michigan. In high school, Hobbs was a straight-A student who was especially strong in mathematics and science. It was thus no surprise that her guidance counselor suggested that she continue her education in engineering. Although no one in Hobbs’s extended family had ever received a college degree, she chose to attend the University of Michigan. In 1954, she began attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan as a first-generation college student.
As a junior engineer in 1961–62, her duties included calculating the radiation from various types of plasma and writing proposals. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Michigan in 1958 and 1961, respectively. She followed that up in 1962–63 with a year at the Barnes Engineering Company in Stamford, Connecticut. Hobbs’s first job after finishing her master’s degree was at the Bendix Aerospace Systems Division in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The same year Hobbs married Sidney Moore and returned to Ann Arbor to accept a job as a system analyst at Sensor Dynamics. She was responsible for the theoretical analysis of stress-optical delay devices and reported to the vice president.
In 1965 Moore returned to the University of Michigan as a research associate at the Institute of Science and Technology. Moore’s next move, in 1967, was to KMS Industries in Ann Arbor, where, as a system analyst, she was responsible for supporting the optics design staff and establishing computer requirements for the optics division. Only two years later, she left KMS to take a senior analyst position at the Datamax Corp in Ann Arbor. During that year Moore pursued her doctoral studies under the tutelage of esteemed doctoral adviser and renowned spectroscopist, Samuel Krimm.
When she received her doctorate, she became the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Physics, almost 100 years after Edward Bouchet, the first African American to earn his Ph.D. in Physics in 1876. Her dissertation was entitled “A Vibrational Analysis of Secondary Chlorides”, and it focused on a theoretical analysis of the secondary chlorides for polyvinyl-chlorine polymers. Her research has been published in a number of scientific journals including the Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy, the Journal of Chemical Physics, and the Journal of Applied Physics. From 1972–1977, she, Krimm, and collaborators published more than thirty papers on this and related research issues.
Upon completing her PhD in 1972, Moore worked at the University of Michigan as a research scientist until 1977, continuing spectroscopic work on proteins. In the five years following her dissertation, she published more than thirty papers with Krimm and collaborators. Later, she became an executive with the Ford Motor Company. She started out at Ford as an engineer in its Automotive Assembly Division. Later, she became an executive with the Ford Motor Company where she oversaw the warranty department of the automobile assembly. Moore also expanded Ford’s use of Japanese engineering and manufacturing methods in the 1980s.
She did this in part by writing a technical paper which communicated the concepts of Japanese engineer Genichi Taguchi as working design methods for practical use. This work proved critical to boosting Ford’s competitiveness during Japan’s domination of the automobile market. On the social side, Dr. Hobbs Moore worked on science and math programs for the community and was a member of Links, Inc., a service organization for Black women, and Delta Sigma Theta. In 1995, she was awarded the inaugural Edward A. Bouchet award at the National Conference of Black Physics Students posthumously. Dr. Moore’s trailblazing life will be remembered in how she paved a way for so many. Dr. Willie Hobbs Moore’s legacy highlights the importance of education and leadership in inspiring change and motivating success.