Anna Estelle
Glancy

BIO:

Anna Estelle Glancy is known as the “First Lady of Optics” because of her contribution to eyewear lens design. She was born in 1883 in Massachusetts and earned her BA in astronomy at Wellesley College in 1905. She went on to receive her PhD from UC Berkeley in 1913 and is known as the first woman to do her own research at Lick Observatory in San Jose. Her research advisor, Armin Leuschner, under whom she studied Celestial Mechanics, called her “brilliant, industrious, and accurate.”  

However, after completing her PhD she was not able to find a job in this field in the United States due to sexism. She traveled to Argentina with her classmate, Phoebe Waterman, to work as an assistant astronomer at the Argentine National Observatory. She remained there for four years, and then returned to New England at the onset of World War I. She was still unable to find a position in astronomy there, so she decided to move into optics instead. The rest of her career was spent as a geometric research optician at American Optical Company in Southbridge, Massachusetts. She proved to be very talented at the complex mathematical calculations necessary in ophthalmic optics. Her boss, Dr. E.D. Tilyer, a former astronomer, was well known as a leading lens designer. She performed the calculations necessary for the Tilyer lens, a demanding process that took almost a decade. Despite this, her work on this project remained unrecognized, as the lens does not bear her name.  

Glancy was awarded a patent in 1923 for her design of the first progressive lens for eyeglasses. She received thirteen patents for her innovations during the period from 1929-1945. Her passion for astronomy never faded, as she continued to write astronomy papers with her advisor Armin Leuschner. Though she was not able to work in that field, she made her mark on another one, and as of 1950 was the sole woman lens designer in the world.  

Womanhood is a public art and digital media project that promotes the historical contributions of women to Santa Clara County. https://womanhoodproject.org/ 

Womanhood is supported by the County of Santa Clara Office of Women’s Policy.