Virginia Tucker Collection
Collection
Identifier: MS463
Virginia Tucker (1910-1985) was a native North Carolinian and one of the first women to work for NACA (now NASA) in Langeley, Virginia beginning in 1935. She later moved on to work for the Northrop Corporation in Southern California as an aerospace engineer during the 1950s and 1960s. Her papers include newspaper clippings, a scrapbook, newsletters, and correspondence. Most materials are related to her personal life and interests or to her advocacy for women in engineering and in the STEM workforce.
(one document case)
None
Permission to publish materials from this collection must be obtained from the Head of Archives and Special Collections.
0.4 Linear Feet
This collection includes Virginia Tucker's personal papers, as well as some materials from after her death. It includes a scrapbook with pictures and clippings relating to her time at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), Northrop Santa Monica, and the Society of Women Engineers. It also includes many newspaper clippings, personal correspondence, books, and postcards.
Virginia Tucker was from Hertford, North Carolina, and graduated from North Carolina College for Women (now UNC Greensboro) in 1930 with a bachelors in mathematics and a minor in education. After she graduated, she worked as a high school teacher in her hometown of Hertford, NC for five years. She took the civil servant exam, and was called to Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in 1935, which was part of NACA (now NASA). She was one of five women hired at Langley in 1935 for a female computing pool to process data from flight experiments. Virginia Tucker oversaw the female computing pools, including all white and all black computing pools, through WWII. She oversaw hundreds of women during the war. In 1946, Tucker left Langley for the Northrop Corporation in California, and relocated to Los Angeles, working as an aeronautical engineer. After 17 years, she returned to North Carolina, and worked as a high school superintendent until her retirement in 1974. Tucker was active in the Society of Women Engineers throughout her career, and was active in the Episcopal Church.
This collection was donated by Tucker's neice, Marjorie Williams, in 2014. Accession number 2014.032.
Two books, "Expanding the Envelope, Flight Research at NACA and NASA" by Michael Gorn, 2001, and "William Byrd's Dividing Line Histories" by William Byrd, 1929, were separated from the manuscript and have been added to the Georgia Institute of Technology Library's catalog as part of the archival book collection. Photographs and other visual materials were seperated and placed in collection VAM463.
(one document case)
Sarah Scott processed these papers in February 2017.
Part of the Archives and Special Collections, Library, Georgia Institute of Technology Repository