Mathematician Who Developed NASA Orbit Trajectories
She switched her academic interest from a language to mathematics, finding that industry valued talent over race and gender bias, becoming a trailblazer whose technology creativity significantly helped launch the U.S. space program.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Evelyn Boyd Granville (EG) was the younger of two sisters born in Washington, D.C. Her father worked as a custodian in their apartment building but left the family when she was young. Her mother worked as an examiner for the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
CHILDHOOD
In the absence of a father or father-figure, EG was raised by her mother and an aunt (her mother’s twin sister). The sisters often spent portions of the summer at the farm of a family friend in rural Virginia.
EDUCATION
EG’s school years from elementary through high school grades were completed in the D.C. (District of Columbia), which separated student classes based on race, prior to the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education, based on segregated classes in Topeka, Kansas, leading to the Court’s ruling that “separate is not equal” and thus segregated public education was illegal throughout the United States.
Valedictorian in her high school class, EG received a partial scholarship to the all-female Smith College in Northampton, Mass, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics, followed by her Master’s degree from Yale University and eventually a Doctorate while studying functional analysis of equations and mathematical theory.
FIRST CAREER PLAN NEVER A BINDING COMMITMENT
When first enrolling in college, EG planned to study French but was soon fascinated by courses in mathematics, physics, and astronomy. She returned to Washington during summer break to work at what was then the National Bureau of Standards.
“This whole word they’ve invented, nerd, didn’t exist in my day,” said EG to a newspaper later in life, adding, “Thank goodness!”
Looking back on her career path after retirement, EG said, “If I had known then that, in the not-too-distant future, the United States would launch its space program and astronomers would be in great demand in the planning of space missions, I might have become an astronomer instead of a mathematician.”
FIRST ADULT CAREER JOB – ASSOC. PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS
EG’s first venture into the full-time job market was being hired as an Associate (not yet tenured) Professor of Mathematics at Fisk University, a highly ranked university (a member of the informal ‘HBCU’ – historically Black colleges and universities), also the oldest institution of higher learning in Nashville, Tennessee, offering more than 20 undergraduate and graduate programs including biology, chemistry, physics, and clinical psychology.
EG said that she joined the Fisk faculty in 1950 (4 years before Brown v Bd of Education) because she felt then that professorships at other colleges were effectively closed to Black women.
RECRUITED FOR CREATIVE COMPUTER ANALYSIS
While racial discrimination within all levels of education was obvious at the time, industry was sometimes not restrained by the same, self-imposed burden. “There was such a need for talent,” said EG later, “that companies stopped looking at race and gender.”
That was true, up to a point. Recruited by IBM to program a data processing unit, EG was part of the company’s team working with NASA (National Air and Space Agency), a year after NASA was founded in response to the Soviet Union (Russia) launching of its ‘Sputnik’ satellite.
At IBM, EG was assigned to the satellite-focused Project Vanguard. “At that time, the satellite was the size of a grapefruit,” she told Scientific American magazine later. “We were writing programs for something up in the air the size of a grapefruit!”
EG’s specialty in the analysis and interplay of complex equations and variables was a valuable expertise for IBM and NASA, which looked to harness early mainframe computers for an edge in the space race with the Soviet Union.
Eventually EG was assigned to work on the ‘Mercury’ astronaut program, which in February 1962 successfully launched a rocket with John Glenn aboard as the first American to orbit Earth. EG wrote programs to track orbital trajectories, critical calculations that included safe reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Later, with North American Aviation and IBM, EG was part of divisions aiding the Apollo missions, providing technical support to engineers working on Moon landing calculations years ahead of the first steps on the lunar surface in 1969.
CHALLENGE – TALENT OVERCAME RACE AND GENDER LIMITS
EG often lamented that women and minorities remained significantly underrepresented in math and sciences. “We accepted education as the means to rise above the limitations that a prejudiced society endeavored to place upon us,” wrote EG in a 1989 essay for the scholarly journal Sage, which focuses on Black women.
CAREER SATISFACTION
Over a career spanning six decades, EG embraced personal reinvention. She taught in a public school in Texas (where she described being “shocked” at the poor math skills of students), collaborated on a math textbook (Theory and Applications of Mathematics for Teachers, published in 1975) used in more than 50 universities and helped her husband raise chickens and catfish at a 16-acre tract in East Texas.
Despite EG’s contributions to computer advancements, she saw one spin-off – the humble calculator – as an enemy. She proposed banning calculators in elementary school and returning to classic teaching methods such as long division and multiplication tables. “The children end up crippled in mathematics at an early age. Then, when they get to the college level, they are unable to handle college classes,” said EG. “It’s tragic because almost every academic area requires some exposure to mathematics.”
Once asked to list her accomplishments, EG said: “First of all, showing that women can do mathematics.” Then she added: “Being an African American woman, letting people know that we have brains too.”
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This career story is based on several sources, including an obituary for Evelyn Boyd Granville, written by Brian Murphy of The Washington Post, published by The Philadelphia Inquirer on 7/17/23 plus internet research.
