Miss Olga Fradiss
(Wide World Photos.)

Miss Olga Fradiss, the first woman to obtain an engineer's certificate for aeronautical construction

Miss Fradiss is the young girl who is currently making headlines... in the air. Hasn't she just been awarded the diploma of "aeronautical construction engineer"?
The young technician is only 21 years old, two very dark and very lively eyes light up her fine brown face, while she speaks with gentleness and simplicity. Parisian, born in the rue de Rennes, she now lives for seventeen years in this elegant building in the Ranelagh district, where she received us yesterday.
- "The vocation came to me about five years ago, she told us... I had studied at the Lycées Molière and Sévigné, then prepared for "Centrale". After my two baccalaureates, I went into aerostatics, which had been appealing to me for some time.
-What particularly tempted you about aeronautics?
-"I was mainly attracted by the theory, although at the beginning I worked a lot on "maths" without any particular application, and I immediately became passionate about aerodynamics and aircraft engines. But even though I don't particularly have a taste for adventure, I like aviation because it is something of today and even tomorrow, and because you can find a lot of new things, the unprecedented and the unexpected in it." And Miss Fradiss, having thus made her little confession to me, explained to me that there was a small gap in her knowledge of aviation.
It's because, she told me, I've never flown; Dad never wanted to. He thinks it's too dangerous for a young girl like me..." Miss Fradiss is also a sportswoman, in the most precise sense of the word. She does a lot of swimming and even more tennis. She even told me she intends to join a women's sports society soon, which will perhaps be Academia. P. 0.