“I’m out here to do a job and I knew I could do it, and that’s where my focus was, on getting the job done. I was not intentionally trying to be a pioneer.” These are the words of a woman who proved that gender or skin color doesn’t matter when it comes to being a mathematician. This extraordinary woman inspired many people with her hard work. Before we find out about her achievements, we need to understand the challenges she faced to get there.
On a very sunny day in Birmingham, Alabama, a beautiful baby girl named Annie Easley was born. Little did her parents know, she would become on of the first African American woman to work at NASA. Starting strong, she graduated high school as a valedictorian. Through out grade school, Annie Believed that as an African American woman in the 1940’s she could only be a teacher or a nurse. Not wanting to teach, Annie swore that she would be a nurse. A couple years before graduation, Annie thought more about her career and decided to be a pharmacist instead of a nurse. After high…show more content… It was then she came across an article that changed her life. The story was about two twin African American sisters working for NACA (The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) as computers. As she thought more about the job opportunity she realized she could do the same and applied for a job at NACA the next day. Annie received the job position and started working right away. In her time at NACA, the name changed to NASA, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, she got her Bachelor of Science for Mathematics at Cleveland State University and Russia launched Sputnik 1. While Annie Easley’s work helped with the launch and making of Centaur, one of NASA’s first rockets, most of her coworkers would say that her biggest contribution was her
