Eleanor Crockett Pressly (1918 – May 10, 2003) was an American mathematician and aeronautical engineer in the

sounding rocket A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket or a suborbital rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are used to ...

program at

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...

Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC emp ...

Early life

Eleanor Crockett Pressly was born in

Due West, South Carolina Due West is a town in Abbeville County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 1,247 at the 2010 census. It is the home of Erskine College and Dixie High School. History Some say the name is a mispronunciation of "DeWitt's Corner" ...

, the only child of Samuel Agnew Pressly and Georgia Crockett Pressly. She earned a bachelor's degree at

Erskine College Erskine College is a Private college, private Christianity, Christian college in Due West, South Carolina. It is an undergraduate liberal arts college and a graduate Erskine Theological Seminary, theological seminary. The college was founded in ...

in 1938, and a master's degree in mathematics at Duke University in 1943.Pressly, Eleanor C
"The Sounding Rocket as a Tool for College and University Research"
''Geophysics and Astronomy in Space Exploration'' (December 1962): 1-6. JFK_with_1963_Federal_Woman's_Award_winners

JFK_with_1963_Federal_Woman's_Award_winners

Career

During World War II, Pressly taught mathematics to air corps students at

Winthrop College Winthrop University is a public university in Rock Hill, South Carolina. It was founded in 1886 by David Bancroft Johnson, who served as the superintendent of Columbia, South Carolina, schools. He received a grant from Robert Charles Winthrop, ...

and worked at

Radio Research Laboratory The Radio Research Laboratory (RRL), located on the campus of Harvard University, was an 800-person secret research laboratory during World War II. Under the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), it was a spinoff of the Radiati ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. After the war, she was a mathematician and aeronautical research engineer at the

United States Naval Research Laboratory The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the corporate research laboratory for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. It was founded in 1923 and conducts basic scientific research, applied research, technological ...

and was a member of the

American Rocket Society The American Rocket Society (ARS) began its existence on , under the name of the American Interplanetary Society. It was founded by science fiction writers G. Edward Pendray, David Lasser, Laurence Manning, Nathan Schachner, and others. Pendray ...

. She also oversaw launches at

White Sands Missile Range White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) is a United States Army military testing area and firing range located in the US state of New Mexico. The range was originally established as the White Sands Proving Ground on 9July 1945. White Sands National P ...

and Fort Churchill in Manitoba. "No matter how many times it happens, I can never get over the excitement of a launching," she told an interviewer in 1957. Pressly transferred to the Goddard Space Flight Center soon after it opened in 1958, and was head of the Vehicles Section in the Spacecraft Integration and Sounding Rocket Division, in charge of probes launched into the

upper atmosphere Upper atmosphere is a collective term that refers to various layers of the atmosphere of the Earth above the troposphere and corresponding regions of the atmospheres of other planets, and includes: * The mesosphere, which on Earth lies between the ...

. She developed the

Aerobee The Aerobee rocket was one of the United States' most produced and productive sounding rockets. Developed by the Aerojet Corporation, the Aerobee was designed to combine the altitude and launching capability of the V-2 with the cost effectiv ...

Jr., co-developed Aerobee-Hi 150, and oversaw the design of the Aerobee Hi 150 A, all sounding rockets used during the

International Geophysical Year The International Geophysical Year (IGY; french: Année géophysique internationale) was an international scientific project that lasted from 1 July 1957 to 31 December 1958. It marked the end of a long period during the Cold War when scientific i ...

(1957–1958). When

James E. Webb James Edwin Webb (October 7, 1906 – March 27, 1992) was an American government official who served as Undersecretary of State from 1949 to 1952. He was the second Administrator of NASA from February 14, 1961, to October 7, 1968. Webb led NA ...

spoke to the

General Federation of Women's Clubs The General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC), founded in 1890 during the Progressive Movement, is a federation of over 3,000 women's clubs in the United States which promote civic improvements through volunteer service. Many of its activitie ...

in 1962, he mentioned Pressly by name as one of the women in a "position of importance" at NASA. In 1963 Pressly was one of the six recipients of the Federal Woman's Award, given to career federal employees who made significant contributions to their programs. In 1964,

Lady Bird Johnson Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson ('' née'' Taylor; December 22, 1912 – July 11, 2007) was First Lady of the United States from 1963 to 1969 as the wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson. She previously served as Second Lady from 1961 to 1963 w ...

invited Pressly to the White House again, for a luncheon about women in the space program. In 1966, she chaired a panel at the Conference on Unguided Rocket Ballistics in

El Paso, Texas El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the seat of El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the 23rd-largest city in the U.S., the ...

. In 1981 she was honored with the Mary Mildred Sullivan Award from the Erskine Alumni Association.

Publications

Publications by Pressly included "Counting with

Geiger Counters A Geiger counter (also known as a Geiger–Müller counter) is an electronic instrument used for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation. It is widely used in applications such as radiation dosimetry, radiological protection, experimental p ...

" (''Review of Scientific Instruments'' 1949, with Homer E. Newell), ''Upper Atmosphere Research Report Number 21. Summary of Upper Atmosphere Rocket Research Firings'' (Naval Research Laboratory, February 1954, with Charles P. Smith Jr.), "A Mass Spectrometric Study of the Upper Atmosphere" (1954, with John W. Townsend Jr. and Edith B. Meadows), "Future Sounding Rockets" (1958, with Newell and Townsend) "The Aerobee Rocket" (1958, with Townsend and

James Van Allen James Alfred Van Allen (September 7, 1914August 9, 2006) was an American space scientist at the University of Iowa. He was instrumental in establishing the field of magnetospheric research in space. The Van Allen radiation belts were named aft ...

), and "The Sounding Rocket as a Tool for College and University Research" (NASA, December 1962).

Personal life

Pressly died in Rockville, Maryland, in 2003, aged 84 years. Her only noted survivor was a cousin.

References

External links

Eleanor C. Pressly
on

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

. * Alfred Rosenthal,
Venture into Space: Early Years of Goddard Space Flight Center
' (NASA 1968). {{DEFAULTSORT:Pressly, Eleanor C. 1918 births 2003 deaths Erskine College alumni Duke University alumni 20th-century American mathematicians Aeronautical engineers Goddard Space Flight Center people People from Abbeville County, South Carolina American women mathematicians 20th-century American engineers American women engineers Mathematicians from South Carolina Engineers from South Carolina 20th-century American women 21st-century American women