Women have been an integral part of NACA/NASA operations since 1922. They have played important roles such as mathematician, computer, astronaut, engineer, and supervisors. They have made lasting impacts and helped land a man on the moon. As of 2012, women made up one third of all employees including 30% of supervisors and 20% of engineers. The following year, 37% of all new hires were female. In 2016, 50% of the newest class of astronauts were women. While these numbers may sound small, this is a significant increase in female employees at NASA compared to the last few decades.

The first woman hired by the NACA was Pearl Young in 1922. She was originally hired to the Instrument Research Division which “designed, constructed, calibrated, and repaired virtually all instrumentation carried on aircraft.” She quickly became an integral part of the organization and revolutionized the way technical manuals and papers were written and dispersed. By the time Young retired from NASA in 1961, she had served as the Chief Technical Editor for close to 20 years. In that role, “she insisted that all reports be checked and rechecked for consistency, logical analysis, and absolute accuracy.”

Vera Huckel started work at NACA in 1939, during a time when very few women worked as computers. By 1945 she was a section head in charge of up to 17 women. Through the years she also worked as mathematician, aerospace engineer, and supervisory mathematician.

Dorothy Vaughan started work at the NACA in 1943. She previously worked as a math teacher but heard that the NACA was recruiting and jumped at the chance. In 1949 she became the first African American manager at the NACA as the section head of the West Area Computing Unit. When NASA was created in 1958, she joined the Integrated Analysis and Computation Division and became an expert at the computing language FORTRAN. Vaughan even taught male engineers how to use the computers.

Kathryn Peddrew joined the NACA in 1943. She was originally hired as a chemist but when the NACA found out she was African American they sent her to join the West Area Computing Unit. Peddrew spent over 40 years working for the NACA/NASA, mainly working in balance in the Instrument Research Division.

In 1958, she became NASA’s first African American female engineer. She spent her career working on supersonic research finally retiring in 1985 after 34 years with the administration. To learn more about wind tunnels like the one Jackson worked in, watch the video below.

Her work was directly related to the space program as she analyzed flight trajectory and landing for multiple flights including Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 and John Glenn’s Friendship 7. In the early days of electronic computing, she would double check the equations done by the electronic computer. Many astronauts, including John Glenn, relied on her for correct calculations. As Johnson said, “’You tell me when you want it and where you want it to land, and I’ll do it backwards and tell you where to take off.’ That was by forte.” Johnson was crucial in calculating the mathematics for the lunar landing and in the rendezvous of the command module and the lunar module.

These women, and many more, changed the way NASA was run and the way women in mathematics were viewed. At one time, women weren’t considered to have the aptitude to be engineers at NASA but these women proved the men wrong and went on to great things. They taught men how to use electronic computers and put a man on the moon. They proved that women engineers and mathematicians are not to be underestimated and continue to inspire the next generation of girls and boys.