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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, May 17, 2004 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Martha Ackmann

"Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight"

ABSTRACT -- In 1961, just as NASA launched its first man into space a group of women pilots underwent secret testing in the hopes of becoming America's first female astronauts. They passed the same battery of physical tests at the legendary Lovelace Foundation as did the Mercury 7 astronauts but were dismissed by NASA, Vice President Lyndon Johnson and politicians on Capitol Hill. The USSR sent its first women into space in 1963; the United States did not follow suit for another twenty years. "The Mercury 13" tells the story of these thirteen remarkable women pilots and the visionary man who tested them, Dr. W. Randolph Lovelace II, NASA's head of Life Sciences.

SPEAKER -- Martha Ackmann is a journalist, editor and author whose writing spans a wide variety of topics. Her newspaper columns and op-eds have focused on politics, science, health and women's history and have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe among others. She is a frequent contributor to the sports pages of the New York Times writing on women athletes and social equity. Her recent book, "The Mercury 13: The Untold Story of Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight" was published by Random House last summer. Ackmann also is a scholar of the poet Emily Dickinson. She has written widely on Dickinson biography and is a board member of the Emily Dickinson International Society. She taught the first college course on Dickinson conducted in the poet's own home in Amherst, Massachusetts and continues to teach that and other women's studies classes at Mount Holyoke College, where she has been a faculty member since 1987. Ackmann is also a founding editor of LEGACY: A Journal of American Women Writers published by the University of Nebraska Press. Ackmann holds a BA from Lindenwood College, an MA from Middlebury College and a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts. She also has done graduate work in literature at Oxford University. A native Missourian, Ackmann now lives in Western Massachusetts.



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