Over time, both individually and as a group, the West Computers distinguished themselves with contributions to virtually every area of research at Langley.ĭorothy Vaughan helmed West Computing for nearly a decade. Two years after President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 into law, prohibiting racial, religious and ethnic discrimination in the country’s defense industry, the Laboratory began hiring black women to meet the skyrocketing demand for processing aeronautical research data.ĭorothy Vaughan was assigned to the segregated “West Area Computing” unit, an all-black group of female mathematicians. those who speak of NASA’s pionefers rarely mention the name Dorothy Vaughan, but as the head of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA’s) segregated West Area Computing Unit from 1949 until 1958, Vaughan was both a respected mathematician and NASA’s first African American manager.ĭorothy Vaughan came to the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in 1943, during the height of World War II, leaving her position as the math teacher at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, VA to take what she believed would be a temporary war job.
Courtesy Vaughan Familyīorn Sept.20, 1910, in Kansas City, MO. 24, 2020, at 101 years old – an American hero who’s pioneering legacy will never be forgotten. In 2015, at age 97, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. “I loved going to work every single day,” she said. Katherine retired in 1986, after 33 years at Langley. “If she says they’re good,’” Katherine remembers the astronaut saying, “then I’m ready to go.” The flight was a success and marked a turning point in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in space. As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl”-Katherine Johnson-to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand. In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Katherine was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. She worked on and published several papers with engineers that formed the core of the Space Task Group, the NACA’s (later becoming NASA in 1958) first official foray into space travel. The 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik changed history-and her life. Katherine and her husband moved to Virginia to pursue the opportunity, where Katherine spent the next four years analyzing data from flight tests until her husband died of cancer in December 1956. It wasn’t until 1952 that she heard about open positions at the all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA’s) Langley laboratory, headed by fellow West Virginian Dorothy Vaughan. At the end of the first session, however, she decided to leave school to start a family with her first husband, James Goble. Katherine was one of the three black students handpicked to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools. She left her teaching job and enrolled in the graduate math program in 1939.
At 18, she enrolled in the historically black West Virginia State College, where she graduated with highest honors in 1937 and took a job teaching at a black public school in Virginia. Her brilliance with numbers shone early on and vaulted her ahead several grades in school, and by 13, she was attending high school. You may have heard about their story from the 2016 film Hidden Figures.
These African American women computers played a vital role in 1962, when they helped send the first American astronaut into orbit, John Glenn. This week we are shining light on Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, three women who played a vital role in advancing NASA’s missions. This year for Women’s History Month, we are highlighting different women each week who, although you may have not heard of previously, have contributed greatly to society.
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