When Easley was little, her mother had encouraged her to study hard, telling her that she could be anything she wanted but she would have to work for it.
Easley majored in Pharmacy when she attended Xavier University in New Orleans in 1951 and then left the school for marriage in 1954. Even though Easley didn’t return to school to finish her Pharmacy degree later, she got an offer from NASA in 1955.
Easley began her 23-year career at NASA before it was called NASA. When she started to work in 1955, it was called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA).
Easley applied because she got attracted by the article shown that twin sisters who worked as “human computers” at NACA. Because of her strong mathematical skills, she started to work as a computer scientist and mathematician.
In 1963, Easley started working on nuclear-powered rocket systems including the Centaur high-energy booster rocket. Then she realized that she would continue to learn more skills and knowledge. By the time NASA replaced “human computers” with machines, Easley learned computer programming languages such as Formula Translating System (Fortran) and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Returned to school in the 1970s, Easley finished a mathematics degree from Cleveland State University in 1977, while working full time.
Later in Annie’s career, she took on the supervisor role of equal employment opportunity (EEO) counselor and worked on addressing issues of gender, race, and age in discrimination. She also Easley worked with local tutoring programs, encouraging younger students to explore their interests in what would later be determined as the STEM field.
Stemette, Manjit Somal. “Meet Annie Easley”. https://stemettes.org/zine/profiles/meet-annie-easley/
Carpenter, Jana. “ANNIE J. EASLEY (1933-2011)”. March 13, 2020. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/annie-j-easley-1933-2011/
Mills, Anne. “Annie Easley, Computer Scientist”. Sept. 21, 2015. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/annie-easley-computer-scientist
