Introduction (edit: added links and names of affiliated members of West Area Computers
Dorothy Johnson Vaughan (September 20, 1910 – November 10, 2008) was an African American mathematician who worked at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor agency to NASA. Along with many other African American women, including Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Kathryn Peddrew, Sue Wilder, Eunice Smith, and Barbara Holley, she was part of the all-African American female group working at West Area Computers.[2]
Life and Career: (edit: Changing to Life and Education, adding additional educational background and links)
Life and Education
She was born Dorothy Johnson in Kansas City, Missouri, the daughter of Annie and Leonard Johnson. Her family moved to Morgantown, West Virginia and she graduated from Beechurst High School in 1925.[3] She later attended and graduated from Wilberforce University in Xenia, Ohio in 1929 at the age of 19 with a degree in education to work as a teacher to assist her family due to the Great Depression. Dorothy married Howard Vaughan in 1932 and the couple had four children.[4]
Career: (edit: gave career it's own section and added background leading to hiring and more information of social and racial barriers)
Prior to arriving at NACA's Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in 1943, Vaughan worked as a mathematics teacher at R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia.
With the passing of Executive Order 8802 and Executive Order 9346, Dorothy was able to get hired in 1943 to work at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and was assigned to the West Area Computers, a segregated group consisting of all-African American women due to existing Virginia Jim Crow Laws. She moved into the area of electronic computing when the first (non-human) computers were introduced at NACA. Vaughan did computer programming, becoming proficient in coding languages such as FORTRAN, and also contributed to the space program through her work on the Scout Launch Vehicle Program. In a 1994 interview, she recalled that working at Langley during the Space Age felt like being on “the cutting edge of something very exciting.”
In 1949, Vaughan became the acting head of the West Area Computers after the death of current section head, Blanche Sponsler. This promotion made her the first black supervisor at NACA. It would take two more years until she would be officially appointed the title of section head, in January 1951.[4] Mathematician Katherine Johnson was assigned to Vaughan's group before being transferred to Langley's Flight Research Division.
Vaughan continued at Langley after NACA became NASA in 1958, during which time it moved away from segregated groups. She would join the Analysis and Computation Division (ACD), and specialize for the rest of her career in electronic computing and FORTRAN programming. She also participated in Scout (Solid Controlled Orbital Utility Test system) Project tests at Wallops Flight Facility. Dorothy Vaughan’s career at Langley spanned twenty-eight years.
She retired from NASA in 1971, and died November 10, 2008.
In popular culture
Octavia Spencer will play as Dorothy Vaughan in the movie Hidden Figures set to release in December 25, 2016 based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly of the same name.
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