Born: 22 February 1930, United States
Died: 24 November 1990
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Janez Yvonne Lawson Bordeaux
The following was written by Nina Baker and is excerpted from the book From Alchemy to Transport Phenomena: A Global History of Women in Chemical Engineering.
Despite her UCLA chemical engineer degree (1952), Janez Yvonne Lawson Bordeaux (1930-1990) could not get work as a chemical engineer because of her race and gender.
Chemical engineering’s loss was the US Space Program’s gain and she became the first African-American hired into a technical position at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as a ‘computer’. JPL sent her on a programming training course at IBM and she learnt speed coding and was promoted to ‘mathematician’. She later worked in the aerospace industry company, Ramo-Wooldridge.