“My head is not in the sand. But my thing is, if I can’t work with you, I will work around you. I was not about to be so discouraged that I’d walk away. That may be a solution for some people, but it’s not mine.” — Annie Easley speaking about facing prejudice in a 2001 interview
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Annie Easley | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Annie Jean Easley April 23, 1933 |
| Died | June 25, 2011 (aged 78) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | B.S. in Mathematics, 1977 |
| Alma mater | Cleveland State University |
| Occupation | Computer engineer |
| Employer(s) | Lewis Research Center at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics |
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Annie Easley (April 23, 1933 – June 25, 2011) was an African American computer scientist and mathematician who made critical contributions to NASA's rocket systems and energy technologies.
Easley's early work involved running simulations at NASA's Plum Brook Reactor Facility and studying the effects of rocket launches on earth's ozone layer. She taught herself assembly programming using languages like Formula Translating System (Fortran) and the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to help with these simulations. She would also work on developing code used in researching and analyzing alternative power technologies like batteries and fuel systems, which would be later used in hybrid vehicles and NASA's Centaur upper-stage rocket.
Early life and education
[edit]Annie Easley was born to Bud and Willie (née Sims) McCrory in Birmingham, Alabama.[1] She had a brother six years her senior.[2] Her mother raised them as a single mother.[3]
Before the Civil Rights Movement, educational and career opportunities for African-American children were very limited. Segregation was prevalent, African-American children were educated separately from white children, and their schools were often inferior to white schools. Annie's mother told her that she could be anything, but she would have to work at it. She encouraged Annie to get a good education. From the fifth grade through high school, Annie attended Holy Family High School, and was valedictorian of her graduating class.[4] At a young age Annie had interest in becoming a nurse, but around the age of 16 she decided to study pharmacy.[2]
In 1950, Easley enrolled in classes at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans,[5] an African-American Catholic university, and majored in pharmacy for about two years.[4] She left Xavier to get married and moved to Cleveland, Ohio.[3]
In 1977, she obtained a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Cleveland State University.[6][7]
Career
[edit]
In 1955, Easley read a story in a local newspaper about twin sisters who worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) as "computers".[8] She applied for a job the next day, and was hired two weeks later, becoming one of four African Americans out of about 2500 employees. She began her career as computer at the NACA Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory (which became NASA Lewis Research Center, 1958–1999, and subsequently the John H. Glenn Research Center) in Cleveland.[9] Later after electronic computers started being used at NASA her title changed to mathematician and computer technician. Even with a degree, Easley also had to complete internal specialization courses to be considered a professional at NASA. Easley was denied financial aid that other employees received for education, without explanation from the agency.[10] She also noted that she did not feel that her pay was very high when she first started with two years of college. Although she was promised a GS-3 in her interview, her first paycheck was a GS-2, and when she questioned it she was told there were no more GS-3s available.[2]
Easley's outreach for minorities did not end with her volunteer work at college career days. At NASA she took upon herself to be an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) counselor. This was one of the formal ways that she helped her supervisors at NASA address discrimination complaints from all levels.[11] She was also part of a recruitment effort on behalf of NASA for engineering students from numerous colleges.[2]
Her 34-year career included developing and implementing computer code that analyzed alternative power technologies, supported the Centaur high-energy upper rocket stage, determined solar, wind and energy projects, and identified energy conversion systems and alternative systems to solve energy problems.[12] During the 1970s Easley worked on a project examining damage to the ozone layer. With massive cuts in the NASA space program, Easley began working on energy problems; her energy assignments included studies to determine the life use of storage batteries, such as those used in electric utility vehicles. Her computer applications have been used to identify energy conversion systems that offer the improvement over commercially available technologies. Following the energy crisis of the late 1970s, Easley studied the economic advantages of co-generating power plants that obtained byproducts from coal and steam.[13] After retiring in 1989, she remained an active participant in the Speaker's Bureau and the Business & Professional Women's association.[9] Despite her long career and numerous contributions to research, she was cut out of NASA's promotional photos. In response to one such event, Easley responded by saying "I'm out here to do a job and I knew I had the ability to do it, and that's where my focus was, on getting the job done. I was not intentionally trying to be a pioneer."[10]
Easley's work with the Centaur project helped lay the technological foundations for future space shuttle launches and launches of communication, military and weather satellites.[5][9] Her work contributed to the 1997 flight to Saturn of the Cassini probe, the launcher of which had the Centaur as its upper stage.[9]
Annie Easley was interviewed in Cleveland on August 21, 2001, by Sandra Johnson.[2] The interview is stored in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Johnson Space Center Oral History Program. The 55 page interview transcript includes material on the history of the Civil Rights Movement, Glenn Research Center, Johnson Space Center, space flight, and the contribution of women to space flight. In that same Interview, Easley was asked whether she still played with gadgets and stated "I don't have the time or the desire. I will get the email and I'll send it, but I don't play with it. It's not like this fascinating thing I play with. I'd much rather be out doing something actively, like on the golf course or doing other things."[7]
Easley lived in a time where women and African-Americans were facing discrimination from society. She experienced discrimination related to being an African-American during her career. In one incident, her face was cut out from a picture to put it on display. In her 34-year career she worked in four different departments: the Computer Services Division, the Energy Directorate, the Launch Vehicles Group and the Engineering Directorate, although none of her moves were due to promotions, which she recognized may have been due to her race or sex.[2]
Throughout the 1970s, Easley advocated for and encouraged female and minority students at college career days to work in STEM careers.[14] She tutored elementary and high school children as well as young adults who had dropped out of school in a work-study program.[7]
Easley was also a budding athlete who founded and subsequently became the first President of the NASA Lewis Ski Club and participated in other local ski clubs in the Cleveland area.[1][2]
On Feb 4, 2022, NASA's History Office Twitted (Posted on X): ' "I just have my own attitude. I’m out here to get the job done, and I knew I had the ability to do it, and that’s where my focus was." Annie Easley was hired at the NACA (NASA's predecessor) in 1955 as a "human computer," launching a career that would last 34 years.'[15]
Personal life
[edit]In 1954, Annie Easley married a man from the military. After her husband had been discharged from the military, the two of them moved to Cleveland, Ohio to be near his family.
After divorcing her husband, Easley returned to Birmingham. As part of the Jim Crow laws that maintained racial inequality, African Americans were required to pass a literacy test and pay a poll tax in order to vote, which was outlawed in 1964 in the Twenty-fourth Amendment. She remembered the test giver looking at her application and saying only, "You went to Xavier University. Two dollars." Subsequently, she helped other African Americans prepare for the test.[16][better source needed]
Easley had always loved dressing up. She wore stockings and heels almost every day in college. Although there was no dress code in her work department, wearing pants as a woman during that time was still not normalized. However, she was one of the first to wear pants to work in the 1970s after talking to her supervisor about it.[2]
In her first three years after retiring from NASA, Easley focused on volunteer work, often telling people she put more miles on her car as a retiree than as a worker. She traveled the world, mostly to ski, and become an independent contractor in real estate. Although she no longer tutored, she expressed that she was always willing to talk to students at career days and similar events if asked. [2]
Selected works
[edit]- Performance and Operational Economics Estimates for a Coal Gasification Combined-Cycle Cogeneration Powerplant. Nainiger, Joseph J.; Burns, Raymond K.; Easley, Annie J. NASA, Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio. NASA Tech Memo 82729 Mar 1982 31p
- Bleed Cycle Propellant Pumping in a Gas-Core Nuclear Rocket Engine System. Kascak, A. F.; Easley, A. J. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio. Report No.: NASA-TM-X-2517; E-6639 March 1972
- Effect of Turbulent Mixing on Average Fuel Temperatures in a Gas-Core Nuclear Rocket Engine. Easley, A. J.; Kascak, A. F.; National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio. Report No.: NASA-TN-D-4882 Nov 1968
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Overlooked No More: Annie Easley, Who Helped Take Spaceflight to New Heights
She broke barriers at NASA and contributed to its earliest space missions as a rocket scientist, mathematician and computer programmer.
This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.
On May 8, 1962, a powerful rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The liftoff was a test of NASA’s readiness for space exploration and a potentially groundbreaking moment in the Cold War space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Scientists, engineers and spectators watched with anticipation — this test, they knew, could push the boundaries of technology in a way they’d never seen before.
But 54 seconds into the flight, the rocket exploded.
The rocket had two parts: An Atlas booster to thrust it off the ground and a Centaur upper stage intended to propel it beyond the earth’s atmosphere.
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An analysis determined that the insulation panels in the Centaur, which used a flammable combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as a propellant, couldn’t withstand the pressure and had ruptured, causing the explosion.
Annie Easley was a member of the team at NASA’s Lewis Research Center in Cleveland (now the Glenn Research Center) given the critical task of fixing the Centaur’s design. Unlike most people working on the project, she was not an engineer. She hadn’t even finished college. But she was an excellent mathematician and computer programmer who was adept at solving problems.
The Department of Defense had concluded that the Centaur would not be ready for at least several more years, a critical setback for the country.
But 18 months later, on Nov. 27, 1963, the redesigned rocket system successfully blasted into space. It was the beginning of a new era in spaceflight, and Easley’s calculations had been vital to the mission.
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In her 34 years at NASA and beyond, she saw Centaur rockets carry other satellites and interplanetary space probes, including Voyager, Pioneer, Viking and Cassini. The technology used to design the Centaur was also incorporated into the Saturn rockets that sent men to the moon, and into the space shuttle program. Centaur boosters are still used today.
Easley had been hired in 1955 to work at Lewis as a human computer — one of a group of gifted women who calculated and solved complex mathematical problems before there were mechanical computers powerful enough to do the work.
The 2016 book and film “Hidden Figures” memorialized the work of some of these pioneers. Like the women depicted in that history, Easley was Black and had to overcome obstacles to succeed, but she did not let that stop her.
“When people have their biases and prejudices, yes, I am aware. My head is not in the sand,” she said in a 2001 oral history interview for NASA. “But my thing is, if I can’t work with you, I will work around you.”
Indeed, despite the mistreatment she faced throughout her career, she did not let her struggles define her. When asked in the oral history how she felt about certain contributions she’d made at NASA, she replied, “I’m happy at the time when I see it, but my big thing now is trying to learn to snowboard.”
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Annie Jean McCrory was born on April 23, 1933, in Birmingham, Ala. Records show her parents’ names as Bud and Willie (Sims) McCrory. She graduated from Holy Family High School as the valedictorian of her class.
She had thought of becoming a nurse because it was a reliable profession, but she switched her interest to pharmacy, perhaps inspired, she said, by seeing a pharmacist at the corner drugstore near where she grew up. She entered the College of Pharmacy at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans but left after two years to marry Theodis Easley, who was in the military, and returned to Birmingham, where she briefly worked as a substitute teacher.
Though Annie Easley lived in the Jim Crow era, she tried not to allow the restrictions placed on Black people to control her life.
“My mother always told me, ‘You can be anything you want to be, but you have to work at it,’” she said in the oral history. It was a message she would carry for the rest of her life.
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Still, there were times she could not escape disenfranchisement. When she registered to vote in Birmingham, she was told that she had to take a test and pay a poll tax. But, she later recalled, someone at the voter registration bureau saw on her application that she had been educated and waived the exam, saying: “You went to Xavier University. Two dollars.” The incident motivated her to help Black people who did not have an education prepare for the test.
After Theodis Easley finished 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 closest program was in Columbus, Ohio, 140 miles away, so she became a homemaker.
That decision did not last long.
One day in 1955, she read an article in a local newspaper about twin sisters who were working as human computers at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (it became NASA in 1958). Easley, who had excelled in mathematics in school, was intrigued. NACA was in Cleveland, so the next day she drove out to the facility and applied; she was hired as the fourth Black employee of the Lewis Research Center’s 2,500-person work force.
Her responsibilities changed and grew over the decades. She became a computer programmer, working in languages like Simple Object Access Protocol, which is used to transmit data and instructions over networks, and Formula Translating System, or Fortran. She analyzed systems that handled energy conversion and aided in the design of alternative power technology, including the batteries used in early hybrid vehicles.
NASA was good at recognizing and promoting talented people, but it was not immune to the crosscurrents in society, and Easley encountered bigotry and roadblocks because of her gender and her race.
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Some of the discrimination was symbolic: On one project, a photo of her six-person team was enlarged and displayed at an open house, but it had been cropped so that she was cut out of it.
At other times, the problems were more substantive: She was hired at a lower pay grade than others doing the same job, and when she asked why, she was told there were no more “available” positions at that grade level.
But she maintained a positive attitude. “You may control my purse strings,” she would say, “but you don’t control my life.”
During the 1970s, Easley went back to college for a degree, this time in mathematics, in part to be taken more seriously by colleagues who she said did not regard her as a “professional.” Though NASA typically reimbursed employees for their education, her request was denied, and she paid out of her own pocket.
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Her supervisor also did not give her paid time off to complete her degree, even though others had been allowed to do so. So she took classes while working and then took three unpaid months off to finish her education, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree from Cleveland State University.
Easley never let the resistance she encountered deter her. “There are people who have authority, and I think sometimes they abuse it. It makes them think, ‘I’m in charge if I say no,’” she said in 2001, and so “you live with that kind of thing, but you don’t let it stop you.”
In fact, she led a well-rounded life. After her marriage ended in divorce in the late 1960s, she dated, went to group dinners, golfed and played tennis. In 1979, at the age of 46, she took up skiing and started a ski club at work.
She retired from NASA in 1989.
In the later stages of her career, Easley became a role model for others, recruiting for NASA and tutoring students. She also became an on-site counselor for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to combat continuing issues of discrimination.
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Easley died in Cleveland on June 25, 2011. She was 78.
She did not live long enough to see herself immortalized in the heavens, but on Feb. 1, 2021, the International Astronomical Union named a five-and-a-half-mile crater in the moon’s southern hemisphere Easley.
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