Dorothy Donaldson Buchanan

At the university, she studied with Charles Glover Barkla, who had been awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1917[4] and her time overlapped with the first woman in Scotland to graduate with a degree in engineering, Elizabeth Georgeson.

[5] Buchanan was listed on the 1921 census, taken on 19 June, as a part-time engineering student and a visitor at Georgeson's home Upper Sunnyside on Lowther Street in Penrith.

[5] Further illness (pneumonia) caused her to seek a change of climate by moving south to London after her graduation and in order to continue her professional training as a civil engineer.

[10] Buchanan pursued her professional qualification with the Institution of Civil Engineers and had to attend an interview at the ICE headquarters at One Great George Street, London (near Parliament Square) as part of the examination process.

[3] In February 2019, to celebrate their first female member of the institution, the ICE named a room after her, at their headquarters (in the same building where she had not been allowed to be interviewed without the presence of a chaperone).