Born: 12 October 1895, United States
Died: 16 June 1968
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Pearl Young, the first woman to work in a technical role at NASA, overcame barriers and ‘raised hell’ − her legacy continues today
Caitlin Milera, University of North Dakota
Thirteen years before any other woman joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics – or the NACA, NASA’s predecessor – in a technical role, a young lab assistant named Pearl Young was making waves in the agency. Her legacy as an outspoken and persistent advocate for herself and her team would pave the way for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics for decades to come.
My interest in Young’s story is grounded in my own identity as a woman in a STEM field. I find strength in sharing the stories of women who made lasting impacts in STEM. I am the director of the NASA-fundedNorth Dakota Space Grant Consortium, where we aim to foster an open and welcoming environment in STEM. Young’s story is one of persistence through setbacks, advocacy for herself and others, and building a community of support.
Facing challenges from the beginning
Young was a scientist, an educator, a technical editor and a researcher. Born in 1895, she was no stranger to the barriers that women faced at the time.
In the early 20th century, college degrees in STEM fields were considered “less suited for women,” and graduates with these degrees were considered unconventional women. Professors who agreed to mentor women in advanced STEM fields in the 1940s and 1950s were often accused of communism.
In 1956, the National Science Foundation even published an article with the title: “Women are NOT for Engineering.”
Despite society’s sexist standards, Young earned a bachelor’s degree in 1919 with a triple major in physics, mathematics and chemistry, with honors, from the University of North Dakota. She then began her decades-long career in STEM.
Becoming a technical editor
Despite the hostile culture for women, Young successfully navigated multiple technical roles at the NACA. With her varied expertise, she worked in several divisions – physics, instrumentation and aerodynamics – and soon noticed a trend across the agency. Many of the reports her colleagues wrote weren’t well written enough to be useful.
In a 1959 interview, Young spoke of her start at the NACA: “Those were fruitful years. I was interested in good writing and suggested the need for a technical editor. The engineers lacked the time to make readable reports.”
Three years after voicing her suggestion, Young was reassigned to the newly created role of assistant technical editor in the publications section in 1935. After six years in that role, Young earned the title of associate technical editor in 1941.
In 1941, the NACA established the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory, now known as NASA Glenn Research Center, in Cleveland. This new field center needed experienced employees, so two years later, NACA leadership invited Young to lead a new technical editing section there.
It was at the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory that Young published her most notable technical work, the Style Manual for Engineering Authors, in 1943. NASA’s History Office even referred to Young as the architect of the NACA technical reports system.
Young’s style manual allowed the agency to communicate technological progress around the globe. This manual included specific formatting rules for technical writing, which would increase consistency for engineers and researchers reporting their data and experimental results. It was essential for efficient World War II operations and was translated into multiple languages.
But it wasn’t until after this publication that Young finally received the promotion to full technical editor, 11 years after she voiced the need for the role at the agency. She was the first person to hold this role, but she had to start at the assistant level, then move up to associate before receiving the full technical editor designation.
Pearl Young ‘raising hell’
Perhaps the most noteworthy piece of Young’s story is her character. While advocating for herself and her colleagues, Young often had to challenge authority.
She stood up for her editing section when male supervisors wrongfully accused them of making mistakes. She wrote official proposals to properly classify her office in the research division at the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory. She regularly acknowledged the contributions of her entire team for the achievements they shared.
She also secured extra personnel to lessen unbearable workloads and wrote official memorandums to ensure that her colleagues earned rightful promotions. Young often referred to these actions as “raising hell.”
The archival documents I’ve analyzed indicate that Young’s performance at the NACA was exemplary throughout her career. In 1967, she was awarded the University of North Dakota’s prestigious Sioux Award in recognition of her professional achievements and service to the university.
In 1995, and again in 2014, NASA Langley Research Center dedicated a theater in her name. The new theater is located in NASA’s Integrated Engineering Services Building.
In 2015, Young was inducted into the inaugural NASA/NACA Langley Hall of Honor. But throughout her career, not all of her colleagues shared this complimentary view of Young and her work.
One of Young’s supervisors in 1930 thought it necessary to assess her “attitude” and fitness as an employee in her progress report – and justified his position by typing these additional words into the document himself.
Later that year, Young requested time off – likely for the holiday season – prompting a different supervisor to draft an official memorandum to the engineer in charge, a position akin to today’s NASA center director. He referred to Young’s “attitude” in requesting to use her vacation days.
Women not welcome in STEM
While sexism in STEM has shifted its forms over time, gender-based inequities still exist. Women in STEM frequently confront microaggressions, marginalization and hostile work environments, including unequal pay, lack of recognition and additional service expectations.
Women often lack supportive social networks and encounter other systemic barriers to career advancement, such as not being recognized as an authority figure, or the double standard of being perceived as too aggressive instead of as a leader.
Women of color, women who belong to LGBTQ+ communities and women who have one or more disabilities face even more barriers rooted in these intersectional identities.
One of the ways to combat these inequities is to call attention to systemic barriers by sharing stories of women who persisted in STEM – women like Pearl Young.
Caitlin Milera, Research Assistant Professor of Aerospace, University of North Dakota
The following is republished from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Pearl I. Young (1895 – 1968) was the first female professional hired by the NACA, in an age when most women in the government were constrained to staffing support positions such as secretaries or administrative aides. After a productive initial career in the field of instrumentation, she recognized the shortcomings of technical writing by the Langley staff and the lack of a systematic approach within the NACA to prepare technical documents. She personally conceived and implemented a highly-successful technical writing system that resulted in outstanding documentation of superior quality. The basic approach inspired by her efforts was implemented by the NACA and NASA, and continues to be used today.
Pearl Irma Young was born in Minnesota, but grew up in North Dakota and attended school there. At age 11, she left home to work as a domestic in order to attend high school. She attended Jamestown College for two years and, in 1919, graduated from the University of North Dakota as a Phi Beta Kappa with a triple major in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. After graduation, she was hired by the university to teach physics, a role that typically was served by men. At that time, there was only one female physicist working for the entire federal government; and she worked for the National Bureau of Standards. Young took the required Civil Service exam for physicists and fully expected to be hired by the Bureau of Standards; but instead, in 1922, she was hired as a physicist by the NACA and reported to the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. In an interview almost 50 years later, she said that when she arrived at Langley there were only 32 people, that she was introduced to all 32, and that she could still remember all of their names.
She was initially assigned to the Instrument Research Division, working with Henry J. E. Reid, who would ultimately become the Engineer-in-Charge of Langley. The section designed, constructed, calibrated, and repaired virtually all instrumentation carried on aircraft. During her first few years on the job, Young assembled and calibrated instrumentation used to measure pressures on aircraft surfaces in flight.
By 1929, Young had noted that the young, inexperienced engineers at Langley had poor technical writing capabilities; and that a system was required to help teach them the mechanics of writing, as well as to establish procedures that would improve the quality of publications coming from the laboratory. Reid, who in 1926 had become Langley’s Engineer-in-Charge, responded by appointing her as Langley’s first Chief Technical Editor.
She established a new office, hired qualified staff, and formulated a system to approve the technical documents that communicated the extraordinary technical accomplishments of Langley. Her oversight of the technical report program was always exacting. The procedure had all prospective documents extensively vetted by a panel of engineering peers — although she allowed preliminary reports to circulate to key users. Before a report was final, however, her editorial staff reviewed the drafts in detail, and authors made revisions — sometimes extensive revisions. She insisted that all reports be checked and rechecked for consistency, logical analysis, and absolute accuracy.
The procedures established by Young often frustrated NACA engineers, who wanted to see their work disseminated promptly, as well as industry or military clients who wanted prompt answers to aeronautical problems. However, she successfully argued that the quality of the final product was more important than the speed with which it appeared. Pearl Young helped define the public image of the NACA and influenced the way aeronautical engineers throughout the NACA communicated their ideas and results. In 1943, she published a document entitled “Style Manual for Engineering Authors,” which served as the guiding document for authors at Langley and other NACA laboratories. Many elements of that document are still used today.
During its existence, the NACA published more than 16,000 research reports, most of which were distributed to a huge mailing list that included laboratories, libraries, factories, and military installations around the world. The reports became famous for their thoroughness and accuracy, and became the rock upon which NACA built its reputation as one of the preeminent aeronautical research institutions in the world.
While at Langley, Young had no limit to her energy and interests. In 1927 she spent the summer touring aircraft research laboratories in Germany and England; and she was a passenger on the dirigible Hindenburg in 1936 during its first west-to-east flight (the terrible Hindenberg disaster occurred the following year). She had an extra-curricular career as a writer for the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch, for which she covered inaugurations, debuts, dog shows, horse shows, races and other contests, and even had a front-page story on Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt.
Along with several other Langley employees, Pearl Young left Langley in January 1943 to work at the new NACA Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory (now the NASA Glenn Research Center) at Cleveland, Ohio. She left behind her editorial staff of eight women at Langley under the supervision of Miss Viola Ohler, who would later become the wife of famous Langley researcher W. Hewitt Phillips. After a brief four-year stay in which she established and trained the technical editing staff, she resigned to teach physics as an assistant professor at the Pennsylvania State College (now the Pennsylvania State University) Pottsville Center (now Penn State Schuylkill) from 1947 to 1957. She then returned to the NACA in Cleveland where she was given the title of Technical Literature Analyst, and wrote on subjects involving astrophysics.
She retired from NASA in 1961, and taught physics for another year at Fresno State University.
After her retirement, Miss Young pursued her intense hobby of aeronautical history. She was especially intrigued by the life of Octave Chanute, the famous aviation pioneer who had encouraged the Wright brothers and their experiments. She published a comprehensive biography of the works of Chanute, and presented lectures on his life at technical meetings. She also collected records and correspondence between early aeronautical experimenters, which were published after her death as a memorial volume. Her archived papers on Chanute and others are now available at the Denver Public Library.
Miss Pearl Young died on June 16, 1968, having never been married or had children. Her obituary noted that she had been a scientist, university professor, journalist, lecturer, author and world traveler. Born and raised in the Midwest, she had moved from Virginia to Ohio to Pennsylvania to California and back to Virginia. Her interest in science was extended when she donated her body to science. In her later years she did not drive a car, and frequently used city buses and waited at bus stops. As a touching tribute, in her will, she left the City of Hampton approximately $15,000 to be used for the construction of benches and shelters at bus stops throughout the city. Her bequest was announced in the local newspaper, and her generosity was appreciated by the many Hampton citizens who used those facilities.
In recognition of her extraordinary contributions to the NACA and NASA, the NASA Langley Research Center named a new auditorium in her honor in 1995. In 2014, that facility was replaced by a new Pearl Young Theater in a new campus building, and now serves as a focal point for meetings at Langley.