Dorothy Jean Johnson Vaughan (September 20, 1910 – November 10, 2008) was an American
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
and
human computer
The term "computer", in use from the early 17th century (the first known written reference dates from 1613), meant "one who computes": a person performing mathematical calculations, before electronic computers became commercially available. Ala ...
who worked for the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a United States federal agency founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved and its assets ...
(NACA), and
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
, at
Langley Research Center in
Hampton, Virginia. In 1949, she became acting supervisor of the
West Area Computers, the first African-American woman to receive a promotion and supervise a group of staff at the center.
She later was promoted officially to the position of supervisor. During her 28-year career, Vaughan prepared for the introduction of computers in the early 1960s by teaching herself and her staff the programming language of
Fortran. She later headed the programming section of the Analysis and Computation Division (ACD) at Langley.
Vaughan is one of the women featured in
Margot Lee Shetterly
Margot Lee Shetterly (born June 30, 1969) is an American nonfiction writer who has also worked in investment banking and media startups. Her first book, '' Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win ...
's history ''
Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race'' (2016). It was adapted as a
biographical film of the same name, also released in 2016.
In 2019, Vaughan was honored with the
Congressional Gold Medal
The Congressional Gold Medal is an award bestowed by the United States Congress. It is Congress's highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions by individuals or institutions. The congressional pract ...
posthumously.
Early life
Vaughan was born September 20, 1910, in
Kansas City, Missouri, as Dorothy Jean Johnson.
She was the daughter of
Annie and Leonard Johnson. At the age of seven, her family moved to
Morgantown, West Virginia, where she graduated from Beechurst High School in 1925 as her class
valedictorian
Valedictorian is an academic title for the highest-performing student of a graduating class of an academic institution.
The valedictorian is commonly determined by a numerical formula, generally an academic institution's grade point average (GPA ...
. Vaughan received a full-tuition scholarship from West Virginia Conference of the A.M.E. Sunday School Convention
to attend
Wilberforce University
Wilberforce University is a private historically black university in Wilberforce, Ohio. Affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), it was the first college to be owned and operated by African Americans. It participates ...
in
Wilberforce, Ohio
Wilberforce is a census-designated place (CDP) in Greene County, Ohio, United States. The population was 2,271 at the 2010 census, up from 1,579 at the 2000 census.
History
After Wilberforce College was established in 1856, the community was ...
. She joined the
Alpha Kappa Alpha chapter at Wilberforce and graduated in 1929 with a
B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
in mathematics.
In 1932, she married Howard Vaughan, who died in 1955. The couple moved to
Newport News, Virginia, where they had six children: Ann, Maida, Leonard, Kenneth, Michael and Donald.
The family also lived with Howard's wealthy and respected parents and grandparents on South Main Street in Newport News, Virginia. Vaughan was very devoted to family and the church, which would play a huge factor in whether she would move to Hampton, Virginia, to work for NASA.
Career
Vaughan graduated from Wilberforce University in 1929. Although encouraged by professors to do graduate study at
Howard University
Howard University (Howard) is a Private university, private, University charter#Federal, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classifie ...
,
Vaughan worked as a mathematics teacher at
Robert Russa Moton High School
The Robert Russa Moton Museum (popularly known as the Moton Museum or Moton) is a historic site and museum in Farmville, Virginia, Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia. It is located in the former Robert Russa Moton High School, considered "t ...
in
Farmville, Virginia, in order to assist her family during the
Great Depression. During the 14 years of her teaching career, Virginia's public schools and other facilities were still racially segregated under
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
.
In 1935, the NACA had established a section of women mathematicians, who performed complex calculations.
In 1941, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
issued
Executive Order 8802
Executive Order 8802 was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 25, 1941, to prohibit ethnic or racial discrimination in the nation's defense industry. It also set up the Fair Employment Practice Committee. It was the first federal ac ...
, to desegregate the defense industry, and
Executive Order 9346 to end racial segregation and discrimination in hiring and promotion among federal agencies and defense contractors.
These helped ensure the war effort drew from all of American society after the United States entered World War II in 1942. With the enactment of the two Executive Orders, and with many men being swept into service, federal agencies such as the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a United States federal agency founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved and its assets ...
(NACA) also expanded their hiring and increased recruiting of women, including women of color, to support the war production of airplanes.
Two years following the issuance of Executive Orders 8802 and 9346, the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (Langley Research Center), a facility of the NACA, began hiring more black women to meet the drastic increase in demand for processing aeronautical research data.
The US believed that the war was going to be won in the air. It had already ramped up airplane production, creating a great demand for engineers, mathematicians, craftsmen and skilled tradesmen.
In 1943, Vaughan began a 28-year-career as a mathematician and programmer at
Langley Research Center in
Hampton, Virginia, in which she specialized in calculations for
flight path
In the United States, airways or air routes are defined by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in two ways:
"VOR Federal airways and Low/Medium Frequency (L/MF) (Colored) Federal airways"
These are designated routes which aeroplanes f ...
s, the
Scout Project, and
computer programming
Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as anal ...
. Her career in this field kicked off during the height of World War II. She came to the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory thinking that it would be a temporary war job. One of her children later worked at NACA.
Vaughan was assigned to the
West Area Computing, a segregated unit, which consisted of only African Americans. This was due to prevailing Jim Crow laws that required newly hired African American women to work separately from their white women counterparts.
They were also required to use separate dining and bathroom facilities.
This segregated group consisted of African-American women who made complex mathematical calculations by hand, using tools of the time.
The West Computers made contributions to every area of research at Langley. Their work expanded in the postwar years to support research and design for the United States' space program, which was emphasized under President
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
. In 1949, Vaughan was assigned as the acting head of the
West Area Computers, taking over from a white woman who had died. She was the first black supervisor at NACA and one of few female supervisors. She led a group composed entirely of African-American women mathematicians.
She served for years in an acting role before being promoted officially to the position as supervisor. Vaughan worked for opportunities for the women in West Computing as well as women in other departments.
Seeing that machine computers were going to be the future, she taught the women programming languages and other concepts to prepare them for the transition. Mathematician
Katherine Johnson
Katherine Johnson (née Coleman; August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020) was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. ...
was initially assigned to Vaughan's group, before being transferred to Langley's Flight Mechanics Division. Vaughan moved into the area of electronic computing in 1961, after NACA introduced the first
digital (non-human) computers to the center. Vaughan became proficient in computer programming, teaching herself
FORTRAN and teaching it to her coworkers to prepare them for the transition. She contributed to the space program through her work on the
Scout Launch Vehicle Program.
A blog describing her work at NASA is on the
Science Museum
A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in ...
group website
Vaughan continued after
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
, the successor agency, was established in 1958. When NACA became NASA, segregated facilities, including the West Computing office, were abolished. In a 1994 interview, Vaughan recalled that working at Langley during the
Space Race
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the t ...
felt like being on "the cutting edge of something very exciting". Regarding being an African American woman during that time in Langley, she remarked, "I changed what I could, and what I couldn't, I endured." Vaughan worked in the Numerical Techniques division through the 1960s. Dorothy Vaughan and many of the former West Computers joined the new Analysis and Computation Division (ACD), a racially and gender-integrated group on the frontier of electronic computing. She worked at NASA-Langley for 28 years.
During her career at Langley, Vaughan was also raising her six children. One of them later also worked at NASA-Langley. Vaughan lived in
Newport News, Virginia, and commuted to work at Hampton via public transportation.
Later years
Vaughan wanted to continue at another management position at NASA, but never received an offer.
She retired from NASA in 1971, at the age of 61. In her final years, she worked with mathematicians
Katherine G. Johnson and
Mary Jackson on astronaut
John Glenn's launch into orbit.
She died on November 10, 2008, aged 98. Vaughan was a member of
Alpha Kappa Alpha, an African-American sorority. She was also an active member of the
African Methodist Episcopal Church
The African Methodist Episcopal Church, usually called the AME Church or AME, is a predominantly African American Methodist denomination. It adheres to Wesleyan-Arminian theology and has a connexional polity. The African Methodist Episcopal ...
where she participated in music and missionary activities. She also wrote a song called "Math Math".
At the time of her passing, she was survived by four of her six children, ten grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren.
Legacy
Vaughan is one of the women featured in
Margot Lee Shetterly
Margot Lee Shetterly (born June 30, 1969) is an American nonfiction writer who has also worked in investment banking and media startups. Her first book, '' Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win ...
's 2016 non-fiction book ''
Hidden Figures
''Hidden Figures'' is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder. It is loosely based on the 2016 non-fiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly about African Ame ...
'', and the
feature film of the same name. She was portrayed by the
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
winning actress
Octavia Spencer
Octavia Lenora Spencer (born May 25, 1970) is an American actress. She is the recipient of several accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, two Critics' Choice Awards and three Screen Actors ...
.
In 2019, Vaughan was awarded the
Congressional Gold Medal
The Congressional Gold Medal is an award bestowed by the United States Congress. It is Congress's highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions by individuals or institutions. The congressional pract ...
.
Also in 2019, the
Vaughan crater on the far side of the Moon was named in her honor.
On 6 November 2020, a satellite named after her (
ÑuSat 12 or "Dorothy", COSPAR 2020-079D) was launched into space.
Awards and honors
* 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
* October 16, 2019:
a lunar crater is named after her. This name was chosen by
planetary scientist
Planetary science (or more rarely, planetology) is the scientific study of planets (including Earth), celestial bodies (such as moons, asteroids, comets) and planetary systems (in particular those of the Solar System) and the processes of their ...
Ryan N. Watkins and her student, and submitted on what would have been Dorothy Vaughan's 109th birthday.
[Ryan Watkins]
"Thrilled to announce that this small (3 km) crater on the Moon now has a name - Vaughan! My student and I chose to name Vaughan crater after Dorothy Vaughan (you may remember her from @HiddenFigures, where she was portrayed by @octaviaspencer)."
''Twitter'', 16 octobre 2019.
* November 8, 2019:
Congressional Gold Medal
The Congressional Gold Medal is an award bestowed by the United States Congress. It is Congress's highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions by individuals or institutions. The congressional pract ...
* On November 6, 2020, a satellite named after her was launched into space
References
Sources
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Vaughan, Dorothy
1910 births
2008 deaths
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century American women scientists
African-American mathematicians
American women mathematicians
West Area Computers
Wilberforce University alumni
African-American Methodists
People from Kansas City, Missouri
People from Morgantown, West Virginia
Mathematicians from West Virginia
Mathematicians from Missouri
Computer programmers
20th-century women mathematicians
Congressional Gold Medal recipients
African-American computer scientists
American women computer scientists
American computer scientists
20th-century Methodists