Girls Rock

I see guys rock all the time on twitter, so it's time we talk about how girls rock. My first example is Judith Love Cohen. Born in 1933, Judith always had a love for math, but at the time women were not really in any STEM fields. The only woman she knew in STEM was her math teacher, so she decided she would be a math teacher. By the time she got to college and was studying math, she realized she liked engineering more. She studied engineering at Brooklyn College for two years while also dancing for New York's Metropolitan Opera Ballet. She ended up moving to California after meeting her first husband. She graduated with her bachelor's and master's in electrical engineering from USC without ever meeting another female engineer. Post graduation she was given the opportunity to work for Space Technology Laboratories, a NASA contractor.

“I wound up actually being able to do the thing I wanted when I was 10 years old”

While working there, she was often the only woman in the room, because at the time less than 1% of engineers were women. However, this did not have an effect on her and she would take on new and exciting projects all the time including working on the guidance computer for the Minuteman missile, the ground system for the Tracking Data, And Relay System Satellite (which orbited for 40 years), and others.

The reason we are here today is to talk about her greatest achievement (in my opinion), which is her work on the Abort Guidance System in the Apollo Missions. While working on this, she got divorced, re-married, and got pregnant with her 4th child. The day that she went into labor (August 28, 1969), she went to her office to grab her notes and a printout of the problem that she was working on.

Later in the day, she called her boss to tell him that she had solved the problem and, "oh yes, the baby had been born too." This baby is Jack Black.

Less than a year later was the Apollo 13 mission. On their way to the moon, an oxygen tank exploded causing all sorts of things to go wrong on board especially with their primary navigation and guidance on board. They then had to use her Abort Guidance System to return home. The return of the astronauts alive and well, is considered one of the most incredible moments in the history of human spaceflight. Judith even got to be there.

Judith continued to work for NASA throughout the 70s and 80s, even helping with the Hubble Space Telescope. However, saving astronauts is not all she wanted to do. She wanted to empower young girls and encourage them to pursue STEM fields. She went on to write more than 20 children's books to do just that.

In addition to saving the lives of astronauts and empowering young girls, she also worked tirelessly to improve women's rights in the workplace. She helped introduce things that are now considered standard practice such as posting job openings internally and creating formal job descriptions. The main reason of doing this was to encourage more women to apply for jobs. Judith's contributions significantly impacted equality in the workforce.

All in all, not only is Judith Love Cohen a bad bitch, she is brilliant, an icon, an advocate, and an overall legend.

xoxo girls rock 💋