Virginia Tucker Visual Materials
Collection
Identifier: VAM463
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. These pictures are primarily from her scrapbook, and are related to her personal life, work, and time with the Society of Women Engineers.
(one folder)
None
Permission to publish materials from this collection must be obtained from the Head of Archives and Special Collections.
1 Folder(s)
This collection primarily includes photographs from Tucker's time with SWE, but also some photographs from NACA and the Northrop Corporation, as well as photos from Tucker's personal life.
Primarily includes materials from Tucker's scrapbook. Most of the pictures are from SWE conferences from the 1940s-1960s. Some pictures are related to Tucker's personal life.
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 after graduation. 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. Papers are in collection MS463.
(one folder)
Part of the Archives and Special Collections, Library, Georgia Institute of Technology Repository