Most of you are probably wondering what is so special about three women that were mathematicians What most of you don t know is that these three women were African Americans who worked for NASA There names were Katherine Johnson Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan These three women worked very hard to prove to others that they weren't just African American women that they were smart independent women who never gave up The three of them were a huge part in launching America's first satellites into space and the launch of John Glenn into space Now let's talk about each individual women Dorothy Vaughan Dorothy Vaughan was born in Kansas City Missouri on September 10 1910 Later in life Dorothy and her family moved to Morgantown West Virginia When Dorothy graduated she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Wilberforce University She got married in 1932 to Howard Vaughan For the next eleven years she had to balance her time as a housewife and a mathematics teacher at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville Virginia When Dorothy and her family moved to Newport News Virginia where she got a job at NACA National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics the predecessor agency to NASA She was part of one of the first groups of African Americans to be hired as a mathematician or scientist
