This article is part of It was overlookedA series of deaths about great people who were not reported, starting in 1851, in the Times.
On May 8, 1962, a strong missile was lifted from Cape Capeeral in Florida. The takeoff was a test for NASA to explore space and a possible moment in the Cold War Race between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Scientists, engineers and viewers watched anticipation – this test, who knew, could pay the boundaries of technology in a way that they have never seen before.
But 54 seconds on the trip, the missile exploded.
The missile had two parts: Atlas strengthening to push it from the ground and a top stage of Senthor aimed at pushing it beyond the atmosphere of the earth.
The analysis decided that the centaur insulation panels, which used a flammable mixture of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as an instigator, could not steal pressure and tear, causing the explosion.
Annie Isley was a team member at the NASA Research Center in Cleveland (now Glin Research Center) given the decisive task of repairing Centaur design. Unlike most people working in the project, she was not engineer. It did not finish from the university. But it was an excellent mathematician and computer programmer who was adept for problem solving.
The Ministry of Defense concluded that Centaur will not be ready for at least several years, a critical setback for the country.
But after 18 months, on November 27, 1963, the designed missile system succeeded in space. It was the beginning of a new era in space, and Isley’s accounts were vital to the mission.
During 34 years in NASA and abroad, Centau missiles have seen other satellites and space investigations between planets, including Voyageer, Pioneer, Viking and Cassini. The technology used to design Centaur was also combined into the Saturn missiles that sent men to the moon, and in the space shuttle program. Centau reinforcements are still used today.
Isley was appointed in 1955 to work in Louis as a human computer – one of a group of talented women who calculated and solved complex sports problems before the presence of strong mechanical computers enough to do the work.
The 2016 book and movie “Hidden Figures” wrote some of these pioneers. Like women explanations on this date, Esley was black and had to overcome obstacles that prevented success, but she did not let it prevent her.
“When people have their biases and biases, yes, I am aware. My head is not in the sand,” it is He said In the 2001 oral history interview for NASA. “But my thing is, if I can’t work with you, I will work around you.”
In fact, despite the mistreatment she faced throughout her career, she did not allow her to define her. When I was asked in the oral history her feeling about some of the contributions she made in NASA, she replied, “I am happy at the time I see it, but the big thing I am trying now to learn about ice.”
Annie Jean Macurory was born on April 23, 1933, in Birmingham, not to show the records of her parents’ names as a core and Willi (Sims) Macrore. She graduated from the Secondary Family Secondary School as the abundant in her class.
She said that she had become a nurse because she was a reliable profession, but she turned her interest in the pharmacy, and perhaps inspired, by seeing a pharmacy in the Zawiya pharmacy near the place where she grew up. She entered the College of Pharmacy at the University of Kazavier Louisiana in New Orleans, but she left two years later to marry Theodes Isley, who was in the army, and returned to Birmingham, where she worked shortly as an alternative teacher.
Although Annie Isley lived in the era of Jim Crowe, she tried not to allow black restrictions to control her life.
“My mother always told me,” she said in the history of the code.
However, there were times that could not escape deprivation. When she was registered to vote in Birmingham, she was told that she had to take a test and pay a reconnaissance tax. However, you remember later, that someone in the voter registration office saw her request that her education and gave up the exam, saying: “I went to Kazavier University. Two dollars.”
After Thodis Isley ended his military service in 1954, he and Annie moved to Cleveland to be near his family. Annie intended to resume her training to become a pharmacist, but the nearest program was in Columbus, Ohio, 140 miles away, so she became a housewife.
This decision did not last long.
One day in 1955, I read an article in a local newspaper about two twin sisters who worked as human computers in the National Aviation Science Consulting Committee (became NASA in 1958). Isley, who excelled in mathematics at school, was fascinated. NACA was in Cleveland, so the next day she went out to the facility and applied it; She was appointed as a fourth black employee in the Lewis Research Center of 2500 people.
Its responsibilities changed and grew for decades. It has become a computer programmer, which works in languages such as the access to simple objects, which is used to transfer data and instructions via networks, the formula translation system, or Fortran. It analyzed the systems that dealt with the transformation of energy and helped in designing alternative energy technology, including batteries used in early hybrid vehicles.
NASA was good in recognizing and promoting the talented, but she was not immune to foolishness in society, and Esley faced intolerance and road barriers because of her gender and race.
Some discrimination was symbolically: in one project, a picture of its six -person team was expanded and displayed in an open house, but it was backed until it was cut.
At other times, the problems were more fundamental: she was appointed to a lesser degree of wages than doing the same job, and when she asked about the reason, she was told that there were no longer “available” positions at this level.
But she maintained a positive position. “You can control the threads of my wallet,” you’ll say, “but you don’t control my life.”
During the 1970s, Isley returned to the college for a degree, this time in mathematics, partly to take it seriously by colleagues who said they did not consider it a “professional”. Although NASA usually returns employees to teach them, her request has been rejected and paid from her pocket.
Her supervisor did not give her a paid leave to complete her testimony, although others were allowed to do so. So she took lessons during work, then took three unpaid -paid months to finish her education, and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Science from Cleveland State University.
Issley does not let the resistance you faced. There are people who have salad, and sometimes I think they misuse it. “This makes them think,” I am responsible if I say no. “
In fact, she lived a good life. After her marriage finished divorce in the late 1960s, she went to a group dinner, golf and tennis. In 1979, at the age of 46, she took ski and started ski club.
I retired from NASA in 1989.
In the subsequent stages of her career, Esley has become a role model for others, recruiting NASA students and lessons. It also has become a consultant at the site of the Equal Opportunity Committee to combat continuous issues to discriminate.
Isley died in Cleveland on June 25, 2011. She was 78 years old.
She did not live for a long time enough to see itself immortal in the heavens, but on February 1, 2021, the International Astronomical Union launched five and a half miles away hole In the southern hemisphere of the moon.