Whether she was conscious of the effects that social attitudes about gender would have on her life or not, Edna was determined to receive the education that she knew herself to be capable of.  She applied to Simmons College in Boston, however upon acceptance she came to face a serious obstacle in the form of tuition.  Edna’s father refused to pay for the cost of an education that he did not support.  In order to attend Simmons she would have to manage the tuition herself.  She did so by taking on a full-time summer job as a tack-welder and by using her spare time during the semester to sew wedding gowns.  In a gendered world, Edna did not ignore the obstacles that her sex confronted her with, she simply didn’t let them interfere with her ambitions.  This spirited insistence on higher education was something that remained with Edna her entire life.  According to her daughter, Susan, Edna wanted to take a photography silkscreen class in NYC during her later adult years. “She had to get up at 4 AM to get there on time! When other students didn’t have their homework, the teacher used Grandma as an example. Not only did she have her homework, she had traveled by car to a train station, taken a 2 hour train ride, and a subway to get to class.”  Similarly, her daughter Laurel expressed that, “of course the expectation that she had [was] that we would all go to college and that we should all always do our best in school.”

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Edna graduated from Simmons in 1945 with a degree in Chemistry, which at the time was still an overwhelmingly male profession.  She accepted a job offer the subsequent fall from Cyanamid Company in Stamford, Connecticut.  During her time there, she proved herself to be extremely industrious and impassioned.  According to a recommendation written on her behalf from one of the members of her program,

Miss Sawyer was an efficient and willing chemist and I have no hesitation in giving her the highest recommendation both as to personal and professional qualifications. Her work was identified mostly with the development of salt baths for the metal industry, and in 2 such assignments she did distinguished work. In addition to this fairly high temperature type of work, she helped also with miscellaneous chemical and metallurgical problems, metallography and corrosion. (December 2, 1948)

In 1951 Edna patented a chemical salt bath along with one of her co-workers, and that same year she was accepted as a member of the American Chemical Society. While working at Cyanamid she also designed a formula typewriter that received public acclaim and was later purchased by IBM. 

As a chemist Edna was testing boundaries in both gender and chemistry.  Though it was no easy task, she nonetheless showed that accepted social norms could be defied.  Yet the world around her still clung to the hegemony of gendered living.  A magazine image of Edna with her Cyanamid coworkers shows her to still be the only woman chemist in the department and has her almost hidden from view rather than proudly displayed.  In addition publications by Cyanamid about their work included images of Edna demonstrating how to use various devices.  In these depictions she was presented as little more than a prop to a male readership, as the image captions and articles made no mention of her scientific qualifications or contributions. 

Left, Edna dressed in her welding attire with her brother.

Above, Edna's diploma from Simmons College.

Left, Edna with her formula typewriter.

Above, a typed page of organic compounds made using the typewriter.