she has conducted research at caltech library and at harvard. she is a founder at massachusetts general hospital and m.i.t.. her first book is called cured, the people who defeated hiv. she has been published in the new york times, los angeles times and time magazine. in 2016 she published the work that is the basic of her talk tonight, entitled "rise of the rocket girls: the women who propelled us, from missiles to the moon to mars." that work was a bestseller and was widely praised by critics, including one who described it as immersive, evocative, and superbly written. her narrative should be required reading. another commented that when neil armstrong made his giant leap for mankind, there was womankind in the control room. it is a pleasure to welcome to the university of mary washington nathalia holt. [applause] nathalia: thank you so much. i really appreciate you having me here tonight and i am excited to talk to you about rocket girls. this is a group of pioneers whose careers shaped nasa and really made it what it is today. before i get

caltech for example did not open its doors to women until 1970. even then, it only admitted three female students. so helen devises a plan to work around this. she begins seeking out women that have bachelor degrees in math and computer science. she hires them in the lab, trains them, and sends them to a local night school for engineering. todoing this, she is able fill the lab with female engineers who otherwise would not have gotten the door. it is a good thing she does, because these female engineers are needed for a very exciting mission that the lab is about to embark on called the grand tour. ais mission took advantage of one in 175 year alignment of the planet in order to send a spacecraft to the outer planets. the group at jpl was dreaming of looking at planets that no spacecraft had gone to before. jupiter, saturn, uranus, neptune, pluto. in 1970, nasa experienced massive budget cuts and the grand tour was canceled. the group at jpl felt this was unacceptable. they had to take advantage of this moment. so a small group of engineers, inclu

holt has also conducted research at caltech library and at the history of women in america at harvard. in addition, she has been a the reagan institute, massachusetts general hospital, and m.i.t. her first book is called "cured: the people who defeated hiv." she has also written

because of its association with caltech, it only had a quirky academic feel. and it still does today. it still feels very different. despite working in such a progressive place, the women of course were still subject to gender norms of the day, and one of those that i found most surprising were the beauty contests. the lab held miss guided missile, later renamed the queen of outer space. women from all over the lab would compete in these contests. my favorite beauty contest story 1964, as part of the ranger series of missions. missionsa series of whose goal was to send the first camera to the moon in order to the first close-up images informlunar surface and possible landing sites for apollo. 1964, this was proving impossible. there had already been five failed missions. was a real feeling that if we can't even send a are weto the moon, how ever gonna get astronauts there? four ranger sets, the director of the laboratory, flew d.c.o he sat with president johnson on an open phone line to mission at the lab in pasadena, as they heard a live of ranger six as it a