3. Dorothy Vaughan - Black American (African American) Scientist, Mathematician, and Human-Computer
Black Inventors - The Complete List of Genius Black American (African American) Inventors, Scientists and Engineers with Their Revolutionary Inventions That Changed the World and Impacted the History - Part One
Countless important contributions to STEM have come from genius Black Americans. They range from revolutionary cancer research to the humble ice cream scoop.
3. Dorothy Vaughan - Black American (African American) Scientist, Mathematician, and Human-Computer
Source: Beverly Golemba/Wikimedia Commons
Dorothy Vaughan was a Black American mathematician and "Human Computer" who made enormous contributions the U.S. war effort in WW2 and the early space program.
She would also become the first Black American supervisor at NASA.
Biography (Life) of Dorothy Vaughan - Black American Scientist, Mathematician, and Human-Computer
Dorothy was born as Dorothy Johnson on the 20th September 1910 in Kansas City, Missouri. Her parents would later move to Morgantown, West Virginia.
She would later graduate from Beechurst High School in 1925. After graduating with B.A. in Mathematics, she worked as a school teacher to help her family through the great depression.
She married Howard Vaughan in 1932. The couple would have six children together: Ann, Maida, Leonard, Kenneth, Michael, and Donald.
Dorothy would simultaneously rear her children and lead a highly successful career with NACA, later NASA. She would be a lifelong advocate for racial and female equality and a committed Methodist Christian.
She would retire at the age of 60 in 1971.
Education of Dorothy Vaughan - Black American Scientist, Mathematician, and Human-Computer
Dorothy Vaughan won a full scholarship at the historically black college, Wilberforce University. Here she studied for a B.A. in Mathematics and graduated in 1929.
The Career of Dorothy Vaughan - Black American Scientist, Mathematician, and Human-Computer
Dorothy joined NACA in December of 1943. This was only meant to be a temporary war position but would blossom into a lifelong career.
Here she worked as a "human computer" making calculations for individual or teams of engineers. She would later become a team leader for the "West Computers" who were an exclusively non-white group of women "Calculators".
This would make her the first Black American supervisor ever at NACA, later NASA.
Racial segregation was in full force at this time and Dorothy and her team worked and ate in separate parts of the facility.
NASA & Space Program and Dorothy Vaughan - Black American Scientist, Mathematician, and Human-Computer
NACA would evolve into NASA in 1958. Dorothy and her team of "Computers" were transferred to NASA's new Analysis and Computation Division.
This was a mixed sex, a multi-racial group formed in the aftermath of racial equality laws brought in by the U.S. Government.
As electronic computers became more prevalent at NASA, the "human computers" would retrain as computer programmers. Dorothy herself would become very talented at using FORTRAN.
Dorothy and her team would make many significant contributions to the U.S. Space Program.
Death of Dorothy Vaughan - Black American Scientist, Mathematician, and Human-Computer
After retirement, she would live for a further 38 years until she died peacefully on the 10th November 2008.