The "Rocket Girls" were the women that worked at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) before the development of desktop computers. These women are mostly unknown, but they did the majority of all hand calculations for missions. Most of these women were given the nickname of "computers" due to their abilities in the fields of physics and mathematics. [1]
Barbara Paulson was one of the lead female computers hired by JPL. [2]
Macie Roberts was the supervisor of the female computers at JPL. She became the supervisor in the 1960s and continued her work for over thirty years. [3]
Helen Ling was a human computer supervisor at JPL. Ling followed in the footsteps of Macie Roberts as a supervisor for the female division of human computers. She recruited and trained females that were proficient in mathematics and physics. Her legacy includes diversifying the female populus at JPL and continuing the excellence of female workers at NASA and JPL. [4]
Eleanor Frances discovered many meteors and comets while working at NASA. [1]
The book Rocket Girl: The Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America's First Female Rocket Scientist (2013) was written by George D. Morgan. [5]
The book Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars (2016) was written by Nathalia Holt. [6]
The book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016) was written by Margot Lee Shetterly.
The movie Hidden Figures (2016) depicts the computers at NASA, including Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan, and is loosely based on the book of the same name.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center in the City of Pasadena, California, United States. Founded in 1936 by Caltech researchers, the laboratory is now owned and sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and administrated and managed by the California Institute of Technology.
Hydyne is a mixture of 60% unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) and 40% diethylenetriamine (DETA), developed in 1957 at Rocketdyne for use in liquid-fuel rockets. Hydyne was used as the fuel for the first stage of the Juno I rocket that launched Explorer 1, the first successful satellite launch conducted by the United States.
Katherine Johnson was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. During her 33-year career at NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform the tasks. The space agency noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist".
Mary Sherman Morgan was a U.S. rocket fuel scientist credited with the invention of the liquid fuel Hydyne in 1957, which powered the Jupiter-C rocket that boosted the United States' first satellite, Explorer 1.
JoAnn Hardin Morgan is an American aerospace engineer who was the first female engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) John F. Kennedy Space Center and the first woman to serve as a senior executive at Kennedy Space Center. For her work at NASA, Morgan was honored by U.S. President Bill Clinton as a Meritorious Executive in 1995 and 1998. Prior to her retirement in 2003, she held various leadership positions over 40 years in the human space flight programs at NASA. Morgan served as the director of the External Relations and Business Development during her final years at the space center.
Christine Darden is an American mathematician, data analyst, and aeronautical engineer who devoted much of her 40-year career in aerodynamics at NASA to researching supersonic flight and sonic booms. She had an M.S. in mathematics and had been teaching at Virginia State University before starting to work at the Langley Research Center in 1967. She earned a Ph.D. in engineering at George Washington University in 1983 and has published numerous articles in her field. She was the first African-American woman at NASA's Langley Research Center to be promoted to the Senior Executive Service, the top rank in the federal civil service.
The West Computers were the African American, female mathematicians who worked as human computers at the Langley Research Center of NACA from 1943 through 1958. These women were a subset of the hundreds of female mathematicians who began careers in aeronautical research during World War II. To offset the loss of manpower as men joined the war effort, many U.S. organizations began hiring, and actively recruiting, more women and minorities during the 1940s. In 1935, the Langley Research Center had five female human computers on staff. By 1946, the Langley Research Center had recruited about 400 female human computers.
Dorothy Jean Johnson Vaughan was an American mathematician and human computer who worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and NASA, at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. In 1949, she became acting supervisor of the West Area Computers, the first African-American woman to receive a promotion and supervise a group of staff at the center.
Susan G. Finley, a native Californian, has been an employee of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) since January 1958, making her the longest-serving woman in NASA. Two days before Explorer 1 was launched, Finley began her career with the laboratory as a human computer, calculating rocket launch trajectories by hand. She now serves as a subsystem engineer for NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN). At JPL, she has participated in the exploration of the Moon, the Sun, all the planets, and other bodies in the Solar System.
Hidden Figures is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder. It is loosely based on the 2016 non-fiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly about three female African-American mathematicians: Katherine Goble Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who worked at NASA during the Space Race. Other stars include Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, Aldis Hodge, and Glen Powell.
Nathalia Holt, Ph.D. is a journalist and an American author of non-fiction. Her works include Cured, Rise of the Rocket Girls,The Queens of Animation and Wise Gals.
Mary Jackson was an American mathematician and aerospace engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which in 1958 was succeeded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, for most of her career. She started as a computer at the segregated West Area Computing division in 1951. In 1958, after taking engineering classes, she became NASA's first black female engineer.
Rocket Girl or Girls in plural may refer to:
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race is a 2016 nonfiction book written by Margot Lee Shetterly. Shetterly started working on the book in 2010. The book takes place from the 1930s through the 1960s, depicting the particular barriers for Black women in science during this time, thereby providing a lesser-known history of NASA. The biographical text follows the lives of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, three mathematicians who worked as computers at NACA and NASA, during the space race. They overcame discrimination there, as women and as African Americans. Also featured is Christine Darden, who was the first African-American woman to be promoted into the Senior Executive Service for her work in researching supersonic flight and sonic booms.
Barbara Jean Paulson was an American human computer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and one of the first female scientists employed there. Paulson began working as a mathematician at JPL in 1948, where she calculated rocket trajectories by hand. She is among the women who made early progress at JPL.
Jessica Alice Feinmann Wade is a British physicist in the Blackett Laboratory at Imperial College London, specialising in Raman spectroscopy. Her research investigates polymer-based organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). Her public engagement work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) advocates for women in physics as well as tackling systemic biases such as gender and racial bias on Wikipedia.
Janez Yvonne Lawson Bordeaux was an American chemical engineer who became one of NASA's computers. She was the first African-American hired into a technical position at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She programmed the IBM 701.
Helen Ling is a former software engineer who worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). She made considerable efforts to make JPL more diverse.
Barbara Canright was an American human computer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) who was the first female mathematician to be employed. Canright joined the team in 1939 as a human computer, which required "Teams of people who were frequently used to undertake long and often tedious calculations; the work was divided so that this could be done in parallel." During her time at the JPL program she was instrumental in calculating both the thrust-to-weight ratio for performance of engines under various conditions, and the potential of rocket propellant. Canright was critical in the development of the JPL program and laid the foundations for other women to work in a field which was previously closed off to them.
Macie "Bobby" Roberts is a former supervisor at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). She was the supervisor for a group of women nicknamed "computers" during the 1960s. Roberts paved the way for the next generation of female supervisors and computers. The team that she led had their hands on almost every project at NASA before the development of physical computers.