Women in STEM History - Judith Love Cohen

Sometimes you read about a person and then immediately have make a post about it. This is one of those times.

Judith Love Cohen (August 16, 1933 – July 25, 2016) was an American aerospace engineer and author who worked on the Apollo Space Program at the height of her engineering career. In particular she worked on the Abort-Guidance System that saved the lives of the astronauts on the Apollo 13 mission. After retiring as an engineer, she started a publishing company called Cascade Pass in order to publish educational books encouraging children and girls specifically into STEM fields of work. Many of these books she authored herself.

Now I would not normally mention my subject’s personal life at all, because that’s not what this series is about. In this case I will make an exception because there’s a particularly good anecdote as follows.

On the day of the birth of her fourth child, she went to the office in the morning (for the Apollo Space Program) to do a little more work. When it was time to go to the hospital, she took with her a computer printout of the problem she was working on. Later that day, she called her boss and told him that she had solved the problem. And . . . oh, yes, the baby was born, too.

The baby that was born that day? Jack Black… yes that Jack Black. One can only assume much of his excellence comes from his brilliant mother.

You can read more about Judith Love Cohen in an obituary written by her son Neil Siegal here