This Jewish American Heritage Month, I would like to spotlight an incredible Jewish woman that I think more people should know about: Judith Love Cohen.
Judith Love Cohen was born in Brooklyn in 1933. As a child, she loved math and was often the only girl in her math classes. She would go on to study engineering in college while also dancing in the Metropolitan Opera ballet company. She received her bachelor and masters degrees in engineering from USC while working for an aerospace engineering company. She stated that she never once saw another female student in the engineering program. She went on to work on some major projects, but she is most well-known for her work on the Apollo 13 mission. She helped create the Abort Guidance System which would ultimately save the Apollo 13 astronauts after an oxygen tank exploded on their way to the moon. While she was working on the AGS, she went into labor with her fourth child, while at work. She took the problem she was working on for the project with her to the hospital, solved it, and gave birth to Jack Black. In 1990, she retired from engineering to establish a publishing company dedicated to inspiring children, primarily young girls, to pursue STEM and learn about the environment. She wrote and published a series called "You Can Be A Woman...", starting with engineer, with illustrations by her husband. Her son, Neil Siegel, is a computer scientist and engineer who has invented many systems used in military technology and consumer electronics. She passed away from cancer in 2016, but Neil wrote that "she must have influenced tens of thousands of young girls to become interested in professional careers of one sort or another."
Judith definitely deserves more recognition for her work and legacy as a pioneering woman in STEM and an absolute icon in Jewish-American history.
