IT IS ROCKET SCIENCE

摘要

LN THIS IS A GREAT STORY. WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO WRITE THIS BOOK? I came across this story in an unusual way; in 2010 my husband and I were expecting our first baby. We were having an extraordinarily difficult time deciding on baby names. My husband suggested Eleanor Frances and so I Googled the name. The first person to pop up in my search was a woman named Eleanor Frances Helin. My Google search turned up a beautiful black and white picture of her taken in the 1960s where she's accepting an award at NASA. I was stunned by this image as I had no idea that women worked at NASA at this time, much less as scientists. I soon learned that Eleanor Frances Helin wasn't alone, that in fact, a large number of women worked for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA, starting in the 1940s. These women worked as computers which at the time, before the digital devices we have today, simply meant a person who computes. With pencil and paper, this group of women was responsible for all the calculations of the laboratory. Finding them and learning their stories became an obsession I would pursue for years.