Pearl I. Young: 1895-1968

• Physicist, Teacher, Journalist, Lecturer, Author, and world traveler. The first woman hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1922, she was 27 years old.

Her contributions paved the way for professional women at Langley Research Center.

Leaving home at 11 years of age to become a domestic, in order to attend high school, Miss Young grew up in North Dakota, she made her way through college. Graduated in 1919 from the University of North Dakota (UND) Phi Beta

Kappa with a triple major in physics, mathematics and chemistry. 

After graduation, she taught for 2 years at UND in the Physics department.

Miss Young’s work at NACA made her the second female physicist to ever work for the federal government. Later, in

1929, she was appointed to Langley’s first ever Chief Technical Editor.

Her greatest and most lasting contribution to NACA and later NASA, was setting up an editorial office and writing the “Style Manual for Engineering Authors”, setting up the format for reports on research conducted at Langley. It was subsequently adopted by all NACA centers.

As most dynamic women do, Miss Young branched out to keep

her brilliant mind expanding:

• She became a part time reporter and feature editor for a regional newspaper. She earned a front-page by-line for her interview with Eleanor Roosevelt.
• She paid $800 for a round trip ticket No. 1, on the first flight of the Hindenburg in 1936, when she was 41 years old. She was 1 of about 50 passengers on the airship’s first flight about a year prior to its ill-fated flight that crashed in New Jersey.

She soon set her sights on the brand-new NACA Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory (now NASA Glenn Research Center) in 1943. There, she trained the new lab technical editing staff. World War II ended soon after, and Miss

Young resigned from her job at NACA and returned to teaching, accepting a position at Pennsylvania State College (now Penn State University) as Assistant Professor of Physics.

In 1957, at age 62, she returned to Lewis Laboratory, until her retirement in 1961 at age 66, working on bibliographical work.

To learn more about Young's accomplishments and contributions to space flight in the United States of America, read her full biography on NASA's Hall of Honor.