Emma Unson Rotor was a Filipino-American physicist and mathematician. Rotor earned a master’s degree in physics from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila in 1937. She received a Philippine government scholarship to study physics at Johns Hopkins in 1941, but her plans were interrupted by World War II. In 1944 Rotor was hired as a physicist under a wartime appointment by the Ordinance Development Division at what is now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her work was critical to the development of the proximity fuse, one of the most important technological innovations of World War II. After World War II ended, Rotor returned to the Philippines where she taught mathematics and served as an academic dean at Assumption College.
