DOROTHY VAUGHAN
BIOGRAPHY
Dorothy Vaughan was born September 20, 1910 in Kansas City,Missouri, she was the daughter of Annie and Leonard Johnson. Her family moved to Morgantown, West Virginia, where she graduated at High School in 1925.
In 1932 she married Howard Vaughan. They went to Newport News, Virginia where they had six children.
She was seen as a woman of superior intellect and as an elite of the African American community.
She was an African American mathematician and human computer who worked for the NACA,that later was renamed NASA, also at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
In 1949, she became the supervisor of the West Area Computers, the first African-American woman to supervise a group of staff at there.
During her 28 year of career, she prepared for the introduction of machine computers by teaching herself and other black women using the programming language of FORTRAN( a programming language suited to numeric computation and scientific computing ).
Vaughan retired from NASA in 1971, at the age of 61. She died on November 10, 2008, aged 98.
legacy
After being admitted into the NACA, she became the first black supervisor at the NACA,where she was one of the first African Americans to be hired as mathematicians and scientists.Also she perform mathematical calculations for engineers conducting aeronautical experiments in wind tunnels.
As well she has done lot of non mathematical things like fight for the,strong,powerful,independent black women and their rights at work
AWARDS :
- 1925: Beechurst High School - Class Valedictorian
- 1925: West Virginia Conference of the A.M.E. Sunday School Convention - Full Tuition Scholarship
- 1929: Wilberforce University - Mathematician Graduate Cum Laude
- 1949-1958: Head of National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics' Segregated West Computing Unit