This morning seven of us “young women” in the division got to chat with Cathy Osgood, a woman who worked for NASA starting back in the late 50s. She actually did all the talking, but it was really interesting to hear her background, and how she got into the NASA world. One of the most interesting things to me was how two-sided her career path was. For example, she got a degree in Mathematics, but said that the only good thing that came out of her college years was meeting her husband. She got a job as an engineer after working a few years as a “Math Aid” (the women who did calculations and plots in the pre-computer era), but when the Space Task Group moved from Langley to Houston in the early 60s, she left the decision of whether to move with the group entirely up to her husband.
She was a female engineer in the 1950s and 60s (a rather ground-breaking thing at the time) and yet I also got the impression that she deferred a lot of things to her husband or the other men around her. I just found the contradiction interesting. She was fun to listen to though, and my favorite quote was definitely when she referred to her husband and how she’d bounce ideas off him about engineering and trajectory problems:
“He was like my Google, but more user-friendly.”
Hey there – I found your page while searching for NASA “Cathy Osgood” engineer – I worked with her from 90 to 92. Probably THE most intelligent person I’ve met. Her ability to sift through source code was incredible! 🙂 I’m glad you had the chance to meet her!