NASA: Pearl Young at Langley's Flight Instrumentation Facility, March 1929

In this March 29, 1929 photograph, Pearl I. Young is working in the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory's Flight Instrumentation Facility (Building 1202). Young was the first woman hired as a technical employee, a physicist at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and the second female physicist working for the federal government.

Pearl Young graduated in 1919 from the University of North Dakota (UND) as a Phi Beta Kappa with a triple major in physics, mathematics, and chemistry. Following graduation, she was offered a faculty position in the UND Department of Physics, where she taught for two years. In 1922, she accepted an appointment at the NACA's Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (now NASA Langley Research Center) in Hampton, Virginia. Her first assignment was in the Instrument Research Division, where she worked side-by-side with Henry Reid, the future engineer-in-charge. In the late 1920s, when she suggested the need for a technical editor at Langley, she was promptly given the job. In this position, she published a Style Manual for Engineering Authors (1943), which was consulted frequently by employees both at Langley and at the other NACA centers.

In 1943, Pearl Young left Langley for the brand-new NACA Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory (now NASA Glenn Research Center) in Cleveland, Ohio, where she trained the lab’s new technical editing staff. At the end of World War II, Young resigned her post as chief technical editor of the NACA and returned to teaching, accepting a position as Assistant Professor of Physics at Pennsylvania State College (now Penn State University). In 1957 she returned to Lewis Laboratory, where she conducted specialized bibliographical work until her retirement from NASA in 1961.

Image Credit: NASA

- NASA:  Pearl Young at Langley's Flight Instrumentation Facility, March 1929

Pearl Young is humbling for me since it felt kind of progressive taking a triple major in Biology, Anthropology, and Psychology ... in 1969 ... over forty years after she did it.

Ed:  and she studied actual science instead of the fluff you took!

I am so not worthy.

Ed:  by the way, how is that PhD coming along?

You're reading it, mate.