Marja "Maria" Ludwika Watkins (; 2 December 19182 September 2010) was a defence electronics engineer, lecturer and President of the Women's Engineering Society. Early life Ziff was born on 2December 1918 in Vienna, Austria, and grew up in the Polish city of Lvov. Her parents were of Ukrainian descent; her father was director of a bank, and her mother was a research chemist at Lvov University. Education In 1938, Ziff applied to study electrical engineering at the University of Edinburgh. She was accepted and moved to Scotland, surprising the professor who had offered her a place, as he had believed her application was from a Polish man. She became the first woman to study electrical engineering there. She joined the Women's Engineering Society on her arrival in the UK in 1939. In 1941, she graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in Electrical Engineering (Communications). As the situation worsened in Europe, her family refused to join her. Following the invasion of Poland by Russia and Germany, her parents and grandparents died in the concentration camps, only her sister surviving. She never felt able to return to Poland. Career In 1942, Ziff became a technical assistant at Johnson and Phillips Ltd. The company made cabling and navigation items for aircraft, and she worked on technical problems of their distribution systems. Her job was varied, including working as a research assistant for new airplane guidance systems, to supervising the repair of overhead power cables shot down by drunken soldiers or repairing electrical exchanges damaged by bombings. She was one of the assistants to Jules Thorn, the founder of Thorn Electrical Industries, one of the United Kingdom's largest electrical businesses. She lived in Blackheath, London during the latter part of the Second World War, volunteering as an air raid warden in the evenings. During this time she was working on research for the PLUTO Pipeline Under The Ocean project and on a secret airplane guidance system. In 1947, a year after her marriage, Watkins was appointed a lecturer at South East London Technical College. In 1959, she became a lecturer at Northampton College of Advanced Technology, now the City University, and was later promoted to Senior Lecturer, working there until 1985. She was a member of Council and Senate of City University for three years, and a member of Council and the Qualification board of the Institution of Electrical Engineers from