Her background in mathematics helped her achieve fame in her field. On February 8, 1926, as the first woman to deliver a paper at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers' (AIEE) annual meeting, she showed the use of hyperbolic functions for calculating the maximum power that a line could carry without instability. The paper was of importance due to the fact that the transmission lines were getting longer, leading to greater loads and more chances for system instability and Clarke's paper provided a model that applied to large systems. Two of her later papers won awards from the AIEE: the Best Regional Paper Prize in 1932 and the Best National Paper Prize in 1941.