Dorothy Norman Pearse née Spicer (31 July 1908 – 23 December 1946) was an English aviator, and the first woman to gain an advanced qualification in aeronautical engineering.

[5] The WES Journal The Woman Engineer for June 1933 records that Spicer and Gower were 'touring the country with a "circus" which is giving air pageants in two hundred towns this summer in aid of British Hospitals'.

She persuaded the manufacturers of the Spartan plane she and Gower flew in the circus to allow her to undertake the necessary practical and theoretical training at their workshops and earned her 'B' licence, becoming the first woman in the world to do so.

[1] Women were not usually allowed to study at such an advanced level and it took Air Vice-Marshal A. E. Borton to persuade Sir Harold Snagge, chairman of the Napier engineering company, to make special arrangements.

In a speech in 1937, Amy Johnson teased Dorothy: "amidst much laughter she then called upon Miss Spicer to admit or deny the report that she held every licence that it was possible to hold".

On 23 December 1946, the couple caught a flight to Rio de Janeiro but bad weather caused the plane to fly into a mountainside, killing all on board.